Rita Skeeter: Russian Scandal

As it seems to happen every year, a team is being kicked out of the Wizolympics. It is almost as if it is a tradition to cheat in any wizarding games, as long as you don’t get caught! Of course, I kid readers! This year’s rejected country is Russia! What a shame for them to be disqualified, seeing as they hosted the last Winter Wizolympics. It was all quite the scandal. The Russian team has been disqualified from all three rounds of the Transfiguration Relay.

On Day 8 of the Wizolympics, the Transfiguration Qualifier was held, and the Russians made sure that it started with a hitch. As you very well know, this game involves each contestant Transfiguring themselves into different animals to be able to complete different tasks. Sometimes Wizolympians will mess up or simply not Transfiguring all the way. The Russian team certainly had their own ideas on how to stop this from happening, which was to provide the entire team with Felix Felicis. This is a potion that is more commonly referred to as Liquid Luck.

At first, it seemed that the team almost got away with it. They preformed remarkably for the first few minutes of the relay, until one of the members started acting suspicious. Russian contestant Ioann Petrov must have taken too big of a swig because his luck immediately turned into dangerous overconfidence. When it was his turn to transform, he started yelling that he was “the most powerful animal that there ever was” and decided to attempt the obstacle all on his own. The judges, who obviously noticed the effects of Liquid Luck right away, stopped the entire relay. Every single member of the Russian Team was then tested, and every member came back positive. Due to Wizolympic rules, Russia was obviously disqualified from the rest of the Transfiguration Relay.

We may need to keep an eye on the Russian teams from here on out in the Wizolympics, if you ask me. But who knows who else could be successfully sneaking in their own Liquid Luck? Without pointing any fingers, I think some other Relay teams have performed better than I feel they are capable of. When I tried to ask the Russian team to comment on the disaster, they seemed to be able to slip past me at every turn. It seems the potion’s effects are taking a while to wear off.

I’m Rita Skeeter, your Daily Prophet reporter, signing off.