The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has allowed Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva to take part in the women’s individual competition at the Beijing 2022 Olympics.
On February 11, the International Testing Agency (ITA) officially announced that Kamila Valieva had tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine on December 25 last year during Russia’s national championship.
Based on the positive test, the teenager was temporarily suspended from competitions on February 8 by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), but she immediately filed a complaint, for which the sanction was lifted the next day.
Бecause of the restoration of the rights of the skater, the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Skating Union (ISU) filed a complaint, which a three-member CAS panel in Beijing considered yesterday after a 6-hour online hearing.
The judges motivated their decision by the following reasons:
– the competitor is a “protected person” within the meaning of the World Anti-Doping Code
– The panel of judges considered that not allowing the athlete to participate in the Olympic Games would cause him irreparable damage in the given circumstances
– The panel also pointed out that there was a serious problem with the untimely notification of the result of the anti-doping test of the athlete, made in December 2021, which prevented her from establishing certain legal requirements in her favor, such as untimely announcement during the Olympic Games in Beijing 2022 is not her fault.
Due to the case, the ceremony of awarding the medalists of the team competition in figure skating at the Beijing Games was postponed indefinitely, as Valieva had the main credit for the first place of the Russians in the competition that ended on February 7.
At this stage, the IOC only announced that it has not yet been determined how the Olympic medals will be distributed in the discipline, and this decision will be made “later”. The US team finished second, ahead of Japan, Canada, and China.
Kamila Valieva, who is a European champion and world record holder in the short program and for collecting points, is an absolute favorite for gold in the individual figure skating competition at the Olympics in the Chinese capital, which starts tomorrow.
