Valieva finished to compete in the Olympic women’s figure skating competition – Orange County Register

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva has been disqualified from competing in the women’s Olympics by the Court of Arbitration for Sport this week.

In issuing the decision on Monday (Sunday night PST), a three-member CAS panel rejected requests from the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union , the sport’s global governing body, reinstated the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. Temporary suspension for the 15-year-old skater after she tested positive for a banned endurance drug in December.

CAS cited Valieva’s age, disproportionate and irreparable harm and concerns about the notification procedure in the case it ruled that RUSADA made the right decision in lifting the suspension. own after just one day.

CAS said in a statement: “The Panel determined that it was appropriate to allow the temporary lifting of the suspension.

The controversy surrounding Valieva, who is the favorite to win Tuesday’s inaugural women’s competition overshadowed the Beijing Games and led to renewed criticism over the IOC’s decision to allow it. Russian athletes competed at the Olympics despite a series of international investigations that revealed the country’s widely-revealed doping program aided the state of contagion.

The decision was immediately criticized by US Olympic and Paralympic Committee Executive Director Sarah Hirshland.

“Athletes have a right to know they are playing on a level playing field,” Hirshland said in a statement. “Unfortunately, today that right is being denied. This seems to be another chapter in Russia’s systematic and widespread disregard for clean sport. ”

The ruling came after a nearly six-hour hearing on Sunday in which the IOC, WADA and ISU asked the CAS panel to reinstate Valieva’s suspension for testing positive for trimetazidine, a drug covered by WADA banned since 2014 increases blood flow to the heart and is commonly used to treat angina.

Some anti-doping experts believe that trimetazidine can improve athletes’ endurance, help them train longer, and in the case of assisted figure skating try to do the quad jump in the second half of the program, when they have more points.

Because of her age, Valieva is a “protected person” under WADA rules.

WADA and RUSADA, the CAS committee said, “are silent on temporary suspensions of protected persons, while these rules have specific provisions for different standards of licensing evidence and lower sanctions in the case of protected persons.”

The panel also “considered the fundamental principles of equity, proportionality, irreparable harm and the relative balance of benefits as between Entrants and Athletes, who failed to achieve positive during the Olympic Games in Beijing and remain subject to the performance disciplinary process following a positive anti-doping test conducted in December 2021; In particular, the Panel held that preventing an athlete from competing at the Olympics would cause her irreparable harm in these circumstances.”

A sample provided by Valieva during a drug test at the Russian Championships on December 25 tested positive for trimetazidine. Valieva won the Russian championship with the highest total score ever recorded (283.48).

But the WADA-accredited Stockholm laboratory conducting the test did not notify the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) of the results until February 8, the day after Valieva helped the Russian Olympic Committee team win win the team competition.

“The CAS Committee also stressed that there were serious problems with the untimely notification of Athletes anti-doping test results conducted in December 2021 that hindered the Athletes’ ability to establish certain legal requirements in her favor, while such a late announcement was not her fault, in the midst of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics,” CAS said in its statement.

RUSADA placed Valieva on temporary suspension that same day, a sanction that could prevent her from competing further in the Olympic Games. RUSADA lifted the suspension a day later after Valieva formally appealed the sanctions.

At the time, the matter was already an international scandal that began to surface when the medal ceremony for the team competition scheduled for February 8 was postponed.

WADA on Sunday said it would investigate Valieva’s entourage.

Valieva is coached by Eteri Tutberidze, one of the sport’s most polarizing figures. The Tutberidze-trained figure skater has dominated women’s skating in recent years, winning three Olympic gold medals, four World titles, five European crowns and five Children’s World titles since 2015.

The success of Tutberidze’s skaters prompted praise, criticism and growing suspicion. Tutberidze’s training methods emphasize skaters working with quad jumps, jumps in which a skater does four spins, before they reach puberty. Tutberidze believes that the lighter the skater, the easier it is to complete the quad jump, and critics’ emphasis on weight has led to eating disorders and early injuries that ended some of the athletes’ careers. figure skater coached by Tutberidze.

Among those in Tutberidze’s entourage was Dr. Filipp Shvetsky, who was reportedly banned from working with Russia’s rowing team after the 2007 doping investigation. Shvetsky accompanied Valieva to national events. economy this season.

Tuberidze told Russian television over the weekend that she was certain Valieva was “clean and innocent”.

Valieva was born in Kazan, southwestern Russia. She was about 12 years old when she moved to Moscow in the spring of 2018 to coach under Tutberidze at the Sambo-70 club. Just a few weeks earlier, the figure skater coached by Tutberidze had won the women’s Olympic gold and silver medals.

Valieva won the World Junior 2020 title and then in her international senior debut last fall at the CS Finlandia Trophy set a new world record for total points (249.24). She marked her senior Grand Prix debut at Skate Canada International by setting world records for free skate points (180.89) and total points (265.08).

Making her senior Grand Prix debut at the 2021 Canadian International Skating Championships, Valieva won the short program with a new individual best score of 84.19, ahead of Elizaveta Tuktamysheva in second place of 2.95 the point. In the freestyle skate, she skated a clean program with three thirds and only one minor error in her Axel triples. Once again, she set new world records for women’s freestyle skating (180.89) and total score (265.08).

She again raised her world record at the Rostelecom Cup, another Grand Prix event, finishing with 272.71 points, higher than the score of the men’s event winner.

A report published in November 2015 from the investigation led by Richard Pound, former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency and longest-serving member of the IOC, pointed to “a culture of cheating that catches up profound source”, a state-sponsored doping program in which Russian athletes. Employees of Russia’s anti-doping agency regularly accept bribes to cover up positive tests. Moscow drug lab officials admit to deliberately destroying more than 1,400 drug samples days before the WADA inspection.

Another WADA report published in 2017 found that Russia’s elaborate state-sponsored doping program involving 1,000 athletes in 30 sports produced at least 27 ill-fated Olympic medals and undermined the integrity of the two Olympics and several other major international sporting competitions over a four-year period. The investigation, conducted by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, also found that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, the country’s Ministry of Sports, officials of a WADA-accredited Moscow drug testing laboratory and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Security Service (FSB) – successor to the Soviet era. KGB – was involved in covering up positive drug tests on Russian athletes and “manipulating” drug testing, even faking tests on Russian athletes at 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi.