Russian teen skater Valieva gets 4-year ban for doping
RUSSIAN figure skater Kamila Valieva received a four-year doping ban yesterday, effectively stripping the Russian Olympic Committee of its gold medal in the team event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games nearly two years after the competition.
In its long-awaited ruling, the highest court in sport found Valieva guilty of committing an anti-doping rule violation. “Kamila Valieva is found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation and sanctioned with a four-year period of ineligibility commencing on December 25, 2021,” the Court of Arbitration for Sport said.
The court added that all of her competitive results achieved since then are voided, including the gold medal she helped ROC win in the team event at the 2022 Games.
The World Anti-Doping Agency, one of the parties that brought the case to CAS, welcomed the fiat, describing it as a victory for fair sport. “I think for WADA and for clean sport, it means that after following due process a fair result to all athletes has been rendered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport,” WADA Director General Olivier Niggli said.
Russian athletes already faced scrutiny at the 2022 Games over separate doping sanctions and competed in Beijing as ROC athletes, without their flag or national anthem as punishment for tampering with laboratory data that could have identified drug cheats.
Russia denied running a state-sponsored doping program.
In comments carried by RIA news agency, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed yesterday’s ruling as politically motivated.
The CAS panel determined there had been no scope for Valieva, who was 15 at the time of the offense, to be treated with more leniency than an adult found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation.
Valieva tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, which prevents angina, at the Russian national championships in December 2021.
(Reuters)