Kamila cleared to continue
BEIJING: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) yesterday cleared 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva to compete in her next Olympic event, but the teenager ’s doping charge that has rocked the Beijing Games remained unresolved.
CAS said in a statement that they had upheld an earlier decision by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) to lift a ban on Kamila.
The skating prodigy took to the Beijing ice half an hour after the CAS ruling, executing a flawless run through of the short programme she will skate in today’s women’s singles.
“Let’s go Kamila!” Russian ice dancer Nikita Katsalapov said at the adjacent Capital Indoor Stadium after winning a silver medal and learning about the decision.
CAS cited the fact that Kamila was a “protected person” under World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) rules as one of the “exceptional circumstances” underpinning its decision.
Preventing Kamila from competing at the Olympics would have caused the teenager irreparable harm, CAS said in its ruling.
The figure skater is one of the youngest athletes to face a doping charge during an Olympics, prompting global outrage at the role of the adults around her, and the continuing scourge of Russian doping in international sports.
“This appears to be another chapter in the systematic and pervasive disregard for clean sport by Russia,” United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland said in a statement released after the decision.
The CAS ruling did not address the merits of Kamila’s drug case. That now sits in the hands of Wada, which has not given a timeline for adjudicating her case. Many fear it will not be resolved by the end of the Games.
Earlier, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said the awarding of medals for the team event cannot go ahead until the doping case is addressed.
It is not clear whether other members of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team can receive gold medals. The secondplaced US and Japan in third are also waiting in the wings. Canada finished fourth.
Kamila tested positive for the banned heart medication Trimetazidine on Dec 25 at the Russian National Championships, but the result was not revealed until Feb 8 after she competed in the team event at the Winter Games.