The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has begun hearing the doping case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, a scandal that rocked the sport and cast a shadow over her country’s already controversial anti-doping system.
Nineteen months after Valieva helped the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) win gold in the team event at the 2022 Beijing Games despite testing positive for a banned substance, her fellow competitors are still waiting for justice.
“Given the significant delay, justice appears to have been defeated as the athletes – including Valieva herself, the Russian team and the other teams in contention for medals – did not have their medal ceremony,” the US Anti-Doping Agency said. USAda) CEO Travis Tygart. “You cannot possibly try to replace what has been lost by the athletes now holding empty medal boxes.”
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Valieva was 15 when she became the first woman to complete a quadruple jump at the Olympics in the team event. A day later, it emerged that the teenager had tested positive for trimetazidine, intended to prevent angina, during the Russian national championships in December 2021, just weeks before the Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) cleared Valieva to compete in the women’s singles despite her positive test, but said medals for the team event would not be awarded until her case was resolved.
The disciplinary committee of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) ruled that Valieva had committed an offense for which she bore “no fault or negligence”. She was not sanctioned, but her results from the national championships on the day she tested positive were annulled. Rusada, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and the International Skating Union (ISU) are all challenging this decision at the sport’s highest court in Lausanne, Switzerland, in a three-day hearing.
Rusada said it was seeking “appropriate consequences” for the skater’s offence, while Wada wants a four-year ban for Valieva, with her results from Beijing annulled. This would effectively deny ROC the gold medal for their team event. The ISU also wants Valieva to be suspended for the violation. “We want a fair outcome to the case, based on the facts,” Wada spokesman James Fitzgerald said in a statement.
CAS said the parties to the proceedings did not want a public hearing and refused a request by the silver medal-winning US team to have an observer attend on their behalf. Vincent Zhou, one of the American skaters, said in a statement Monday that the global anti-doping system is “failing athletes.” “An open and transparent hearing would go a long way in helping athletes understand every decision that is made,” he said. “Transparency would increase confidence in a global anti-doping system that has lost the trust of its key stakeholders: athletes.”
The IOC said in a statement on Tuesday that it shares athletes’ frustration. “We want competition results to be final during the Games so that athletes can enjoy the glory of the moment during the Games,” the report said.
Valieva and representatives of Rusada did not travel to Lausanne to be heard by the court, but appeared via video link. CAS has said it was unclear when a ruling would be announced. Anti-doping experts haven’t expected it for months.