After a four-year doping ban, Russian skater Kamila Valieva was to lose all of her titles.
Russian dancer Kamila Valieva has been barred for four years. She was only 15 years old when she was caught doping at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The decision means that Russia will lose its team’s gold medal in the Games. On Tuesday, the International Skating Federation will officially say the gold medal is going to the United States.
Valieva was banned by the court in arbitration for sport. The court said that the 17-year-old skater would lose all of her results, prizes, medals, and awards from Christmas Day 2021 when she blew a test for the drug trimetazidine (TMZ), which is used to prevent angina.
As soon as the verdict came out, the World Anti-Doping Association praised it and harshly criticized Valieva’s doctors and coaches. “It is unacceptable for children to dope,” it said.
“The full force for the Global Anti-Doping Code should be used against doctors, coaches, or other support staff who have been discovered to have given performance-enhancing drugs to minors.”
In Russia, on the other hand, people were just plain angry. “Of course, we don’t agree with this,” Dmitry Peskov, who is Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, told reporters. “Of course, it’s political from my viewpoint of view.”
At the same time, the famous Soviet coach Tatyana Tarasova was less direct about Cas’s decision. “Fuck them! “Scum!” she yelled. But the next day, it came out that she tested yes for TMZ just six weeks before, which caused a huge media storm.
Valieva was billed as one of the biggest stars of the 2022 Olympics, and she lived up to the hype by becoming the first woman to do a quadruple jump in an Olympic team event, which helped the Russian Olympic Committee win gold.
That was partly because Valieva was young, and it was not clear whether a child should be punished the same way an adult would for doping.
Russia’s history was always there in the background. Because the country supported so much doping, it wasn’t allowed to fly its flag or play its national anthem at the Games.
She finally got permission from Cas to compete in an individual figure skating event. But when she was under the most stress, she fell times and came in fourth. After that, lawyers argued for two years before Cas finally came to a decision.
The teenage Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was banned from competition for four years by the highest court in sports on Monday.
Her positive doping test ruined the way she competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics along with keeping more than a dozen other competitors from getting their medals.
A three-person arbitration panel at the Court of Arbitration over Sport in Switzerland decided on the punishment.
It was because Valieva, who had been 15 at the time, gave a tainted sample at the Russian national finals just a few weeks before the Games.
Valieva’s ban will go back to December 25, 2021, the date she gave the sample. This means that she will be able to compete in the next Winter Olympics in Italy in 2026.
After her positive doping sample was taken, Valieva, who is now 17, was told to give up “any titles, awards, medals, profits, prizes, and appearance money” she had earned.
They found out about it in the middle of the 2008 Olympics, after Valieva had helped Russia to victory in the team event.
The decision, which came just over a year after the Beijing Games, is likely the last twist in a fight that had many of the same themes that people who follow the Olympics are used to hearing: great athletes, Russian doping, angry accusations, and rumors of coverups.
But at its core, the case showed that global sports can’t always enforce rules against doping and punish athletes alongside countries quickly enough.