Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was disqualified from the 2022 Olympics on Monday, almost two years after her doping case caused turmoil at the Beijing Games.
The verdict from the Court of Arbitration for Sport means the Russians are set to be stripped of the gold medal in figure skating’s team event.
The U. S. finished and is expected to be named Olympic champion instead.
The International Olympic Committee will not award any medals for the Beijing Games, where 15-year-old Valieva starred hours before her positive test for a banned drug at the center was revealed.
CAS said it had accepted appeals from the World Anti-Doping Agency, which called for Valieva to be disqualified from the Olympics and banned.
Russian sports tribunal had cleared her of any blame.
CAS judges banned it for four years, until December 2025, about seven weeks before the next Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
The U. S. won silver in Beijing and is expected to move on to gold. Japan won bronze and Canada placed fourth.
The IOC is in favour of the reallocation of medals and its executive committee will meet next time in March.
Valievas lawyers had argued she was contaminated by traces of the trimetazidine medication they said her grandfather used.
After conscientiously contemplating all the evidence presented before it, the tribunal said in a report that the CAS panel found that Ms. Valieva failed to establish, in a balance of possibilities and discovered in the evidence presented to the panel, that she did not intentionally engage in the (anti-doping violation).
The judges decided that, according to Russian anti-doping rules, Valieva could not benefit from having been a minor at the time of the positive test.
There was no basis under the rules to treat them any differently from an adult athlete, said the court, which did not publish its detailed verdict pending a review of confidentiality issues.
The case caused legal chaos at the Olympics because Valieva’s sample, taken six weeks earlier at the Russian national championships, was not notified through a Swedish lab until hours after she competed in the team event on Feb. 7, 2022.
Valieva continued to skate at the Olympics after rulings by a Russian tribunal and a separate CAS panel did not hold her responsible as a minor.
Valieva’s scrutiny led to a series of errors in the individual event, where she had been the favourite for gold and fell to fourth.
The drama continued when she left the ice. The reaction of her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, was fiercely criticized by skating experts and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
Bach said in Beijing one day later he had been very, very disturbed to watch the tremendous coldness of Valievas entourage.
The case was brought before the CAS to challenge a verdict by the Russian Anti-Doping Court in late 2022 that Valieva was not at fault.
That ruling suggested disqualifying her only from the national championships and letting her keep her Olympic results and gold medal.
WADA asked CAS to impose a four-year ban and to disqualify Valieva from the Olympics. The International Skating Union requested a two-year ban and disqualification.
©News Group Newspapers Limited in England No. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. “The Sun”, “Sun”, “Sun Online” are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. This service is provided under popular terms and conditions of News Group Newspapers’ Limited in accordance with our Privacy and Cookies Policy. To request information about a license to reproduce material, visit our distribution site. Check out our online press kit. For other requests, please contact us. To view all of The Sun’s content, use the sitemap. Sun’s online website is regulated through the Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO).
Our hounds try to be precise, but we make mistakes. For more main points about our complaints policy and to register a complaint, please click on this link: thesun. co. uk/editorial-complaints/