Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, whose positive test for a banned substance caused outrage at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, has been sentenced to a four-year ban from December 25, 2021, the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Monday.
• Also read: Doping: Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva before the sports justice system
The 17-year-old prodigy, who was initially exempted by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) on the grounds that she had committed “no fault or negligence”, has been retroactively disqualified for that entire period, the Supreme Court added of the country added sports world.
The tension was not related to the fact that it was known whether Valieva had violated anti-doping laws, since the teenager tested positive in late 2021 for trimetazidine, a substance said to improve blood circulation and banned from the world since 2014 is, not contested, had been investigated by the Anti-Doping Agency and found traces in his body.
But the young girl, then 15, had cited “contamination from cutlery” that she had shared with her grandfather, who had been treated with trimetazidine after having an artificial heart installed and who took her to training every day.
At the end of a closed hearing that began last September and resumed in November, the CAS nevertheless concluded that Kamila Valieva was “unable to prove with sufficiently convincing evidence that she did not dope “intentionally.” had.
However, the affair, which caused a scandal in the middle of the Beijing Olympics due to the long delay between the collection of samples by RUSADA on December 25, 2021 and their analysis by the WADA-approved Stockholm laboratory, is not over yet.
Kamila Valieva still has the opportunity to appeal to the Swiss Federal Court within 30 days, but only for limited legal reasons.
Most importantly, the CAS did not decide on the consequences of her subsequent disqualification, while Valieva had time to win Olympic gold with the Russians in the team competition before her positive test became known: almost two years later, the medal ceremony is still not organized.