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Moderator: Our keynote speakers have a very relevant story to tell that demonstrates how athletes at every level can be impacted by doping. Antidoping programs are in place to help protect athletes, protect the integrity of sport, and to help ensure clean sport. That is why the Partnership for Clean Competition supports some of the world's top scientists and innovators in high quality antidoping research and development. Olympians and World Champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates are joining us directly from events in Japan where they recently won their first World Championship. Together they've competed in three Olympic games, including silver medalists in the team event in 2022. They competed in 2018 and 2014. They have competed together in ten world championships, again winning the world championships this year, twelve US championships, winning it in 2023, 2022, 2020, and 2015, and seven Four Continents championships. They also just arrived, as I said, from Japan, where they helped Team USA secure the first place win at the ISU World Team Trophy in figure skating, and they're not done yet. So we're excited to have them share their story, and I'd like to invite Madison and Evan up to the stage.

Evan: Hello, hello everybody. Thank you so much to everybody for having us today. Super honored to be here and share a little bit about our story. So Madi and I just flew in from Japan last night, we're a little bit jet lagged, so please bear with us a little bit. We just had an incredible time in Japan, we were doing some touring as well as some competing. It's so cool to be here at the MLB headquarters, I'd like to say thank you to everybody here for hosting us. Our time in Japan, we got an opportunity to see some parts of Japan we would have never otherwise seen. We were up in the north in a province called Iwate. There's a really famous baseball player named Shohei Ohtani who's from Iwate. We were actually in Iwate during the World Baseball Classic. To see the way that this global game brought everyone together was so incredible and it was such a beautiful example of the power of sport. The way that it brings us together, people from different backgrounds, different ages. To fly from Japan, to come straight to the MLB headquarters, a little ironic, but thanks so much for having us today.

Madi: We've had two competitions and also performed in the Japanese Stars on Ice Tour while we were there, so it was a wonderful week of skating for us. We won our very first ever World Championships, a gold medal in our total career, which has been a long career, so that was an incredible experience. At World Team Trophy, we helped the US secure the gold medal. That again was incredible. The team event is such a unique and special event, it only comes around every two years or four years. Four years for the Olympics, two years for the World Team Trophy specifically in Japan.

Evan: This is a photo from last weekend. This is our team, team USA. My caption kinda shifted a little bit, but that's ok. A little bit about the team event, cause it's really unique in figure skating. Figure skating is a very individual sport. It's rare that we get to come together and compete as one. It's like the Rider Cup for golf. Like Madi said, it only comes every two years, or four years, in the case of the Olympics. Our most recent Olympic experience was in Beijing last February. The games in Beijing were a little different than we had experienced before for a couple reasons. One, they happened in the midst of the global pandemic. Two, it happened at the origin site of the global pandemic. Three, no fans were allowed to come. So we were skating in these massive venues for thousands of people but they were virtually empty. So it was just some kind of bizarre experience, but regardless we were extremely grateful for the opportunity to compete at the Olympics. There was a certain amount of uncertainty on whether we'd even have the opportunity considering the Tokyo games were postponed. Needless to say, when the games came around, we were super excited and we were selected to be in the team event for the first time in our careers.

Madi: We were incredibly excited but also incredibly nervous. Full of adrenaline, it was the first time for us to have the privilege to compete in the team event. For our Olympic season, we wanted to stand out. We've always prided ourselves on being creative and pushing skating to different levels and really thinking out of the box. For our Olympic performance, we decided to skate to Daft Punk, which is EDM music, very unusual for figure skating, especially during an Olympic season. In this performance, I play an alien, and Evan plays an astronaut. We meet each other and tell a story on another planet which we named Planet Ice, so it was very fun for us to do this very unique program and we'd like to play it for you.

Evan: There are our teammates, those are the people you can hear cause the rest of the venue is completely empty. We're so proud of that performance for many reasons. In a field of Rachmaninoffs and Beethovens, we were out there skating to Daft Punk and being aliens and astronauts. Watching that immediately brings me back to Beijing. I'm surprised at how emotional I was watching it in front of a group of people.

Madi: I'm surprised at how nervous I felt.

Evan: I'm sure many of you know where the story goes from there, and we're going to get into it, but before we do, we'd like to step back and talk a little bit about what goes in to getting to that point. What does it take to get to the Olympics. I'll share my story first, I'm 34, I started skating at 4. In my 30 years I've spent on the ice, I've spent more time on the ice than I could even imagine or count. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. When I was 9 years old, a Russian couple who had defected from the Soviet Union took jobs at the Ann Arbor Figure Skating Club as ice dance coaches. I'm going to show my childhood photos here. The young Russian couple took my sister and I as their first students. My aunt, who was a skater herself, and went on to become an immigration lawyer, she offered her legal services to the Russian couple in exchange for one year of free ice dance lessons fro her niece and nephew. So that's how I got my start in ice dance, with a quid pro quo.

I didn't start with Madi right away, wasn't that lucky, but I had a wonderful partner named Emily. We started together as kids and we grew up on the ice together. We skated together for 11 years in Ann Arbor with those Russian coaches. It started off just a couple days a week, but the Russian coaches were very demanding, they were great, but they were very intense, and the time commitment grew pretty quickly. By 7th grade, I was leaving school at 11am to go to the rink. I was skating 6 days a week, spending probably thirty to forty hours a week at the rink. Extracurriculars and time spent hanging out with friends and family vacations were sacrificed. Obviously there was a lot of hard work, but there were also some incredible payoffs quickly. Emily and I started to travel internationally. We started to represent team USA, I got hooked immediately. We were traveling to faraway countries I would have never otherwise seen, places like Tallinn, Estonia, Bulgaria, Taipei. For a 12-13 year old boy, the life experience was incredible.

We had some great success. We became Junior World Champions, and we qualified for the Olympics in 2010 despite having a stress fracture that year and being pushed further than I wanted to be pushed, spending the year in one of those plaster casts. Somehow we made our first Olympics, we had an incredible experience there, but at that point, I was 21 years old, I wasn't the 9 year old boy in the photo anymore, and it was time for a new chapter. We decided to change coaches. Luckily at that time, Michigan was the hotbed for ice dance. We didn't have to go far, we didn't have to relocate at all. The Olympic champions and the Olympic silver medalists were training in Canton, Michigan, which was 20 minutes away from Ann Arbor, Michigan. We decided to change coaches and we started training alongside the Olympic champions and the Olympic silver medalist, and it was so inspiring to see how up-close the way the best skaters in the world worked and lived and treated their work. The rink was full of amazing skaters, including one Miss Madison Chock, who was there skating with her partner, Greg, at the time. That's how Madi and I came under one roof, under one coaches, with different partners, competing against each other for a while.

About six months into our training in Canton, Emily and I had an accident training. I was picking her up, and as I brought her down, her skate came down on the back of my leg, and it ended up severing my achilles tendon fully. I remember putting her down and taking my first step, and I turned to Emily and asked if my skate had broken. It just felt like the blade had fallen off the heel. I looked down at the skate, the skate was totally fine. Months later, I realized that feeling was what was happening on the inside of my leg. Needless to say, it was a terrible injury, needed surgery, our for the whole season. When I came back to skating, it was just really difficult to get back into it. I felt like I needed a fresh start, so I started looking for a new partner in the summer of 2011. Fortunately for me, there was a very good skater at the rink who was also looking for a new partner at the time.

Madi: Spoiler alert, it was me. Yes, we both teamed up in Canton at that time, but I'll go back and take you to the start of my journey. I began skating when I was 5 years old in Redondo Beach, California. My idol was Michelle Kwan. She was phenomenal, as you well know, and we had grown up skating in some of the same rinks, not at the same time, but to just see her and know her story, growing up in California, being an Asian American athlete, it was so inspiring to see someone who looked like me achieving her goals, becoming an Olympian, multiple time World Champion, was just incredible. That really sparked my love for skating and sparked my dream of becoming an Olympian.

As a young skater, I also did gymnastics, I did dance, I did many different types of dance, you can see my ballet, that was early, I wasn't very good then, I was figuring it out. I loved performing on the ice, and my coaches took note of that. They saw my joy that I had when I skated and my love of footworks in particular. Not so much jumping, that wasn't really for me. They suggested that I try ice dance. Unfortunately, at that time, there weren't very many ice dance coaches in California. They suggested to my parents that we move to Michigan where some of the best ice dance coaches in the world at the time were located. My parents, being the wonderful people that they are and supporting me no matter what, through think and thin, they were like, "Yeah, let's give it a try." So I'm very grateful for that, cause they put a lot of faith, I was twelve years old at the time, they put a lot of faith in me, and in my dreams. That belief has really inspired me since the beginning of my career as an ice dancer. When I was thirteen, we picked up our lives, they got job transfers, and we moved across the country to Michigan so I could be an ice dancer.

Shortly after that move, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was an incredibly difficult time for our family, definitely the most difficult time we faced, ever. Her and my dad began traveling from Michigan to Dallas where she was receiving treatment from a specialist. I would stay in Michigan, with friends of the family, or family would come to stay with me, so I could continue going to school and continue skating. Obviously, it was very difficult, I was distracted worrying about my mom. Through it all, she was an incredible force and so strong, and always encouraged me to enjoy my time on the ice and with my friends, and relish in the fact that I get to train as a figure skater, somewhere special with all these incredible athletes. Fortunately, she made it through her breast cancer, she beat it, and she's been in remission ever since. It was her strength that really inspired me. I knew that if she could go through that, I could go through anything I needed to go through on the ice. That was a huge inspiration. They are the main reason that I'm here. They've supported me in my Olympic dream my entire life. I'm very lucky and very very grateful.

When I was in Michigan, I found one of my first partners, Greg. We had a lot of success at the junior level and moved up to senior for a couple years before he decided to retire, which was a bit surprising to me because we were so young. Typically in ice dance, you have a long career. Some teams skate together for decades. I still had a huge fiery passion for skating and I wanted to go to the Olympics, we hadn't accomplished that goal yet. I began looking for a partner, and who should I find but Evan Bates?

At the start of our partnership, even before we had our tryout, I had witnessed him through his injury and his perseverance and the way he battled back and fought for his time on the ice and to come back to full strength. It was really remarkable, when you have a severed achilles, that's not something you fully recover from, let alone return to full sport and figure skating where your foot is in a boot all the time. That was an incredible testament to who Evan is as a person, his determination, his work ethic. That's really what struck me, among other things, his personality is really great. That was one of the main reasons I was really drawn to Evan and thought we would be a great fit.

Evan: We started skating together in 2011 and honestly the first year we didn't really have great results right away. What we did have was a ton of fun together on the ice, a lot of chemistry, we were constantly laughing through our training sessions, despite lackluster results. The joy that we shared on the ice together became the foundation for our partnership. I feel like that's the reason we're still competing together today, almost two decades later. With the joy, the results started to come. We qualified for the Olympics in Sochi, 2014. We had an amazing experience. We skated great, we didn't win a medal, but we accomplished all the goals we set for ourselves that year. We felt like the future was very bright. Only later did we realize that one of the most sophisticated doping schemes in the history of sport was happening right under our noses.

Madi: When that information came out in Sochi, it was incredibly frustrating as clean athletes to know that such a concerted effort was made to cheat. We have always had to work very hard for our successes and it was incredibly difficult to reconcile the fact that that was happening. But still, we weren't deterred. We had a goal, we wanted to win an Olympic medal and we didn't let that stop us. We continued our career together and the following year we won our first World medal together in 2015, and then we won another World medal the following year in 2016. We felt like we had this nice momentum building up for the 2018 games in Pyeongchang.

But then, as luck would have it, we faced some adversity yet again. As we were beginning our preparations for the Olympic season, the summer of 2017, I sustained an injury to my ankle during training. We were preparing for our preseason camp. We were being pushed, probably much harder than we needed to be pushed at that point in the season. But we continued, and we loved skating, and we loved working hard, so we thought that that was just what we needed to do. I ended up getting injured, my blade got jammed into the ice as I was coming down from a lift, I fractured fragments of my talus bone. When I went to the doctor, he said that I would need surgery to remove the debris in my ankle, and that I would absolutely need surgery. I was like, "Well, that's not going to work for me, I have an Olympic games to go to."

He was very cooperative with my hardheadedness and I was like, "Is there any way we could postpone this and push through it." He was like, "Okay, maybe, just try it, see how you feel." And so we did, I was taping my ankle everyday to make sure the movement was limited. We limited our ice time and did the best we could with what we had, since we knew it was better than not going and not fulfilling all of the work we had put in the last four years since Sochi. We decided to just make it happen and do the best we could.

Evan: We ended up making the Olympic team, but the experience was not the Olympic dream that we had envisioned. That's Sochi, sorry I missed a slide, and this is Pyeongchang. In the middle of our free dance, we bellyflopped right on center ice. It was not choreographed. It was so devastating after working for so many years. This was our second games, my third, and this was kinda our time, we felt like, to medal. As soon as you do that, you're not medaling. We were mad, we were angry at the situation. We felt like we were going backwards. At this point in our careers, we aren't young. You don't know how many Olympic experiences you get as an athlete. If you're going to compete for another four years. We were kinda at our wit's end. We decided to change coaches, and at this point, the mecca of ice dance had shifted to Montreal. We decided to leave Michigan, leave our families, move to another country.

We started a new chapter with French and Canadian coaches in 2018, and these guys have completely changed our lives. There are many coaches there, but our main coaches are Marie-France and Patrice Lauzon who are a husband-wife team who were an ice dance couple themselves and have really lived a very similar life to the one we're living now. They competed in the Olympics, even had a very dramatic fall at the Olympics which caused them to withdraw as they were hoping to medal. They were World silver medalists, and just good people.

When we moved to Canada and we started to see and be treated with this compassion from our coaches and our team, and be empowered as athletes, it completely changed everything for us. We started to fall in love with skating again. A love that we knew we had, but had waned through the difficult times. We loved the process of coming to the rink and getting better and working on our craft and soon the results started to come back. We won a US title again in 2020, it had been 5 years since we won our first. Afterwards, we were in the press conference and the media told us, that's the longest anyone's gone between national titles, great record! The next year we won a world medal for the first time in 6 years, and the press conference media said that's the longest time anyone's gone between world medals! Great, these aren't the records that we really want, but we'll take them! Things started to go great, leading into Beijing Olympics, we felt like this was finally the time we were going to accomplish our Olympic dream of winning an Olympic medal.

Madi: Back to Beijing, the performance we showed you was one of the best and most gratifying performances that we've had in our careers so far. It was an incredible feeling to deliver that performance for our team when we were under pressure because the last four years, the Pyeongchang games were kinda looming over us a little bit. Even as we got to the spin in our free program of this performance, we talked to each other after the performance, oh wow, glad that the spin went well, since that's what we fell on the previous year. Making it through that mental hurdle was a big accomplishment, not only to deliver that performance, was relly special to us. On that day, we helped solidify team USA's spot as Olympic silver medalists and it was really special to celebrate that with our team, some of whom we've trained alongside for years. It was the best result the US figure skating team has had in history. It was incredible to be a little part of that Olympic history.

The next 24 hours were a bit bizarre. We were all just blissfully going about our day, excited we had just won a medal. Later that evening, we would be going to our medal ceremony to be awarded an Olympic medal. We got dressed in our gear, a special outfit Nike that provides specifically for the podium and we're instructed to not wear it until the opportunity of the podium is there. So, we all got dressed, we felt excited, we had our fresh gear on. We met up, we were taking photos, then someone said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, the ceremony has been canceled."

And we're like, canceled, not postponed? Maybe an hour? They were like, "No, it's been canceled." We had very little information to go off of. We all just kinda sat in the room for a while waiting to hear more. When eventually we did start to hear more of the news that there was a skater in the event who had been caught in a doping violation, and so we didn't know what that would mean for our moment and our medals, but as the story unfolded, we slowly learned more. We kind of knew that we wouldn't be taking home that medal.

Evan: Right, but I don't think we recognized in the moment the kind of impact Beijing would have on our lives. We still haven't gotten closure on this event that happened fifteen months ago. We have the video that we proudly show that is evidence that we lived our Olympic dream and that we won an Olympic medal after years and years of hard work. But what we don't have is the actual medal and what we'll never have is the moment on the podium in Beijing, nor will we have the opportunities that come after winning an Olympic medal, the press tour, the opportunity to capitalize that many medal winning athletes have. Now it's been fifteen months and still no medal of any color, which is difficult, but we did leave Beijing with empty medal boxes, which you can see team USA has up there in the photo on the right. We actually brought them with us today, and if it's ok, we'd like to pass them around, if people want to see them. After today, these are going to go on display at the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, please return them afterwards.

Madi: So we left Beijing with these boxes that you see and no medal. And eventually the story after we left the Olympics wasn't being covered anymore, until the one year anniversary, things had been relatively quiet. As we came up on the one year, US Figure Skating launched a campaign called "More Than Medals". The purpose of the campaign was to shed light on the situation that it was the first time in Olympic history where a team who had earned a medal had left without their medal. This whole thing is so much more than a medal at this point. It's about integrity and accountability and the values that we uphold as athletes and as sport organizations.

Evan: And that's why we're so honored to be here today, honestly, is to recognize the work that is being done in the antidoping movement. As athletes, we are the ones who reap the benefits of all the hard work that the researchers do and the policymakers do. Without your work and your dedication, there would be no fair play. There would be no level playing field because the fact of the matter is there will be people who are trying to get ahead, who will cut corners at the expense of their competitors. For those people, I think the ends justify the means, and that's the sad reality, but to be here today and to see all of you and to thank you personally is a big honor for us and we just want to say thanks.

Madi: And we also love the tagline of this conference, "World class research for world class play." That really resonates with us, it's so powerful, it's so true. Without you being the best at the world and what you do, we could not be the best in the world at what we do. We are incredibly grateful for everything you do and continue to do in your research to help protect the integrity of sport and uphold the values that are so important to all the athletes around the world. So thank you from the two of us and thank you from team USA and thank you from all the teams and all the clean athletes who compete all around the world. We really appreciate the work you do and we couldn't do what we do without you doing what you do, so thank you so much.

Moderator: So next we're going to go on to question and answer. At each of the desks, you have a microphone. You can push the on button if you have a question. I'll get it kicked off. I know there's hopefully some great questions in the audience. But, obviously from the Partnership for Clean Competition, what we do is we try to ensure clean play and fair sport through antidoping science and research that we fund, and it's great to have so many amazing partners, including USOPC, Major League Baseball, the NFL, and USADA. Just looking at the picture of you and the team with the empty medal boxes, on that one year anniversary, what are some of the feelings and emotions that you all have, just standing there, reunited as a team, still waiting for a decision on what medal you are going to get.

Evan: So I felt very surprised at how emotional the one year anniversary was. I think as athletes we develop a skill of compartmentalization, and for us in particular, we decided to continue competing, and just having this unresolved massive thing with this Olympic medal was looming over us, we just wouldn't function well if we just thought about it everyday. So, we just buried it. Honestly, like Madi said, we didn't feel like it was talked about much in the media. When one year came around and US Figure Skating put out a statement, so many people were like, "You guys don't have your medals still? Where are your medals?" And we just don't have our medals still. And this photo was taken at Beijing. We have not been reunited as a team since we left Beijing. I'd say more than half the team has moved on, gone to college, gotten married. The life of an Olympic athlete, the career of an Olympic athlete is short, and the opportunities are so few and far between. They only come once every four years. So to leave without the ceremony, without the medal, was a huge deal, and I know it will come, I know we will get our medal eventually, but the moment has passed, and that's the part that is maybe just still a little bit bitter.

Moderator: On the positive side, it looks like you channeled it into your competition this year, world championship, ISU first place as well in team competition, and some personal news between the two of you.

Madi: Yes, we're engaged! We got engaged last summer after our touring had come to an end and we just went on vacation and, it was very romantic, but since then we've been really enjoying getting back to training and we still have big goals and lots of passion for our sport and we want to continue to inspire future skaters and just show that if you have the passion and the drive you can accomplish anything. That's, for us, what's really important, and it's something we've grown to love is the longevity and the aspect of how much you can learn as you continue to mature as athletes.

Evan: I would add, we've been at this a long time, and now we're starting to really enjoy some success, like a world title a few weeks ago, but it's more like, the journey is the destination. The people that we've become and the things that we overcame together and the way that it has bonded us and contributed to our relationship today is the most meaningful thing. The medal is important, but it's the most important thing. I feel like this is just an unprecedented event in Olympic history. As athletes growing up, there's an unspoken promise that we come the competition and if we do well, we leave with a medal. That is something we always took for granted. Never in a million years could we have guessed that this scenario would take place This isn't the type of Olympic history we wanted to be a part of. I know it will be resolved, but we've learned to hold on to the intangible things more than the medals.

Madi: In a way, maybe it will end up being more impactful cause people will be inspired to have clean performances and be rewarded for them. I think it's a real tragedy when that becomes overshadowed by other things.

Question: Obviously this is a tragedy and the sort of thing we worry about here. Were you aware of or concerned about doping in your sport prior to your personal experience? And if so, what types of doping substances were being used in your sport at the time and perhaps now?

Evan: I think it wasn't the first instance of doping in figure skating dating back to Sochi, we had another competitor have a positive test in I think 2016 or 17 for meldonium. Heading into the Games and not thinking about them, not necessarily concerned about that, I think there is a part of the culture of figure skating that there is doping happening, and I think it's not something that's expected from the casual fan. I'll tell a story quickly, we were drug tested right before we left for our US Championships this January. We were having dinner and our doorbell rang and a couple from Quebec came and drug tested us. We had just gone to the bathroom so we had to wait a while. So we started chatting and they said, what sport are you? We said figure skating and they said, lucky there's not much doping in your sport. And I said, "Funny you should say that, because we are waiting for our Olympic medals because of doping."

I just think that speaks to the fact that doping is not what we all think, well you al know, but to the layperson out there, doping is not something you would associate with figure skating. But in Sochi, the curler tested positive for doping. It's unfortunately happening in all sports and I think that's why we appreciate so much the thoroughness of your work because most people wouldn't look under every rock and stone and we know that you are.

Question: If you think back at the time before you started to win, I guess you were also tested a lot. How was the perception of the antidopng movement back then? Was it something positively viewed on? Was it annoying? If you could back to that time, what could be done to motivate the athletes who aren't necessarily winning the medals but are still subjected to antidoping testing.

Madi: Well, I think in part it's an honor to be part of the doping test pool because you know that you're reaching a level in your sport that's being now looked at and investigated, and it's kinda like the elite get tested. For us, for me personally, I was excited to be include din that pool of elite athletes. And now, being very familiar with the doping protocal and getting doped randomly, and after competition. I appreciate the process even more. It's certainly not a burden and one I'm hapy to take part in because I know how important it is and how much it impacts the clean athletes all around the world.

Evan: Yeah, I think, maybe as athletes, we can speak more positively publicly about the antidoping system because as now, we're mature athletes, we recognize now the significance of having a robust antidoping process, and how that is the foundation for the entire system the athlete needs to have absolute faith in. When there is just a modicum of doubt about the integrity of the system, then everything staarts to fall apart. I think now that we've been kind of entwined in this doping scandal, I think, obviously, our storeis have changed, but I would love to be part of that voice of an athlete who says that the antidoping system is a great thing. They're not trying to get you. They're just trying to preserve the integrity of the sport so we all have an equal chance at a gold medal.

Question: Do you think this situation in Beijing is going to be an eye-opener in your discipline about doping or it seems to be an isolated situation and life moves on with the same perception of doping in ice skating.

Evan: I think the outcome will determine some of that. It's certainly been, in the moment, it felt like a huge story. When we were in Beijing, it felt like it was plastered across every outlet around the world. I would say, I would have thought that about Sochi, I thought that what happened in Sochi was so big that that would have been the tipping point. We have said that we hope this is the tipping point that will change the perception of organized doping, but I don't know.

Question: One of the things that has come up with this situation is the influence of coaches, and obviously you guys have been through different coaches, because we often blame the athlete, but it's often the support system around them. Can you comment on the influence that coaches have, especially in your sport.

Madi: Coaches have a tremendous effect on the athletes. They're really the role models and mentors we look up to, especially if you're a young athlete, up and coming in your sport. The coaches are huge aspects of how you become molded as an athlete, what's ingrained in your values, your mentality. So having knowledgeable coaches and supportive coaches is life changing. Coming from many different coaches and experiencing the different styles and techniques and tactics, I can say that the more you can support the athlete and nature them as a person and not just an athlete, the more success that has seen, in my experience.

Evan: And I think, this particular case is unique, because a minor is the athlete involved. In that instance, we have to look at the people around that athlete and we have a certain amount of empathy for the athlete in question, because a fifteen year old minor, and we know what the culture of sport is, and being a young athlete. You want to be a people pleaser and a star student, and I think, very often, maybe not very often, occasionally, athletes can be put in very compromising situations. We're all for athlete empowerment and protection of athletes, and certainly, minors.

Question: It's shown that the antidoping system is kinda working. You have Sochi, which ended up exposing institutionalized doping. Valieva, who tested positive, but no one knew about it, it was delayed. So the system itself is working from a research perspective, but from an athlete perspective, where do you think the human capital and frailty has failed you, including the bureaucracy. What message would you send to sport leaders across the world, including in this room, what needs to be improved in terms of human capital and bureaucracy and doping.

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