Ladies and gentlemen,

I hope you'll join me at my home for a high octane communal viewing of the women's free skate finals, February 17th, 8:30pm but enough about logistics!

I'm positively quaking in my skates as I write this. BREAKING NEWS: GOLD MEDAL FAVORITE KAMILA VALIEVA HAS TESTED POSITIVE FOR A BANNED SUBSTANCE (Trimetazidine, duh) AND THE IOC IS CURRENTLY ADJUDICATING. WILL THE SOVIET SWEETHEART BE SENT TO THE GULAG? 

Backing up: who is Kamila Valieva you may be asking? I'm SO GLAD you asked. Because....

IT'S THAT TIME, BABIES. WOMEN'S FIGURE SKATING IS HAPPENING AND YOU HAVE ONLY SEVEN DAYS TO PREPARE. Don't worry, I got your back. Below is everything you need to know:

First things first, who is competing for Team USA? A buncha fuckin nobodies. I mean, there's Karen Chen who is fine or whatever but I couldn't name the other two. I tried to google it and ran into this and continued no further: 

Anyway it doesn't matter! Because the story I'm about to tell you solely surrounds the Russian Olympic Committee and, more specifically, this Slytherin Queen:

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Eteri Georgievna Tutberidze. 

Tutberidze is the coach responsible for 2018's gold AND silver medalists and it is widely predicted that this Machiavellian Mistress will be responsible for this year's gold and silver medalists. AND she is currently training three skaters who are widely predicted to be the gold, silver, and bronze medalists at the 2026 Olympics!!! How does she do this? What are Tutberidze's keys to making an Olympic champion?

1. Mind games. Tutberidze is famous for making her babies fight for her love. As the 2018 Olympics approached she had one clear favorite: Elena Medvedeva. Widely considered to be unbeatable, Medvedeva was mommy's favorite until.... 

She turned 18 Old Ass Years Old  

First of all, how dare she do that to Tutberidze? Tutberidze had to rapidly switch gears. Thank God she brought a backup super young child baby: 15 year old Alina Zagitova. Once Tutberidze realized Medvedeva was basically post-menopausal, she switched allegiances and made Zagitova baby numbero uno. The Boss Baby, if you will.  She even went so far as to choreograph a routine that gave Zagitova a points bonus through a scoring loophole which undermined the chances of elderly crone Medvedeva despite being Medvedeva's coach too! 

In the end, Zagitova took gold and second-place-first-loser Medvedeva decided to hobble her walker towards more supportive coaching. That's where the second key to building an olympic champion comes in:

2. More aggressive mind games. Following Medvedeva's decision to split, Tutberidze made the Very Professional decision to get on three national talk shows and show personal texts between her and Medvedeva, accusing Medvedeva of ghosting her and detailing her sense of betrayal. This wasn't the first time Tutberidze had been ditched. Another defector, Polina Shelepan, left training camp when Tutberidze stole her chicken cutlets from her at lunch. Which brings us to key number three:

3. Eating: Not allowed! It's one thing to grow old 

Tutberidze can sometimes look the other way. But eating? No. Eating: not allowed! You think those quads come from smashing big macs? No. They come from not drinking water on competition days, eating only nutritional powders, gaining zero muscle, and skating on fractured bones! Tutberidze weighs her students multiple times a day to ensure there's no rogue munching. How, then, are these skaters able to do anything? 

4. Trimetazidine. It seems the secret is maybe Trimetazidine? A banned substance/ metabolic modulator some might say helps skaters who have never eaten anything to nevertheless pull off jump-jumps, spinnos, and other dancies. 

Which brings us to present day. Last week, Tutberidze's Favorite Pretty Princess, Kamila Valieva did something NEVER before done in Olympic games. She SMASHED a quad into that ice. Valieva is, inarguably, the GOAT of figure skating. Sorry, Michelle Kwan. But Valieva is undeniably at the top of her game. Unfortunately she's also undeniably on Trimetazidine. So where does that leave us? 

Don't worry, Tutberidze has another in her basket of disposables! 

If the IOC decides to look the other way, then this is Valieva's year to Bolero into our hearts during the free skate. But otherwise....

Meet Anna Schcherbakova. Nothing has been written about Schcherbakova or her teammate Alexandra Trusova (trained by Tutberidze's rival Evgeni Plushenko --and there are concentric circles of additional mind games I won't get into here) but, like, THEY CAN ALSO LAND QUADS. They're probably gonna win silver and bronze so I'm not sure why no one seems to give a fuck? And if Valieva is out, they'll win gold and silver and maybe this woman will win bronze:

We wish you luck, USA Today Ad Blocker Pop-up! May you scoop up that bronze!

What a ride! I didn't get into all the other controversies of these olympic games! The mysterious IOC "meeting" with Peng Shuai. The mysterious rationale behind holding a winter games in a desert setting with no actual snow. The mystery of who among the pairs skating teams is openly fucking versus secretly fucking versus just brother and sister. We'll perhaps never get to the bottom of these mysteries but there's one thing that is clear: THIS WOMAN DOES NOT FUCK AROUND.