Russian skater Kamila Valieva, whose positive test for a banned substance had splashed the 2022 Beijing Olympics, was sentenced to four years of suspension from December 25, 2021, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Monday, January 29. ).
The 17-year-old prodigy, initially exempted from sanction by the Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA) on the grounds that she had committed “no fault or negligence”, was retroactively disqualified for this entire period, added the supreme court of the sporting world.
The suspense did not relate to the fact of knowing whether Valieva had violated anti-doping legislation, since the teenager had not contested her positive test at the end of 2021 for trimetazidine, a substance supposed to improve blood circulation, banned since 2014 by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and detected in trace amounts in his body.
A case that could still go on
But the young girl, then aged 15, had cited “contamination via the cutlery” shared with her grandfather, treated with trimetazidine after the installation of an artificial heart, and who took her to training every day. .
The CAS, at the end of a closed hearing initiated last September and resumed in November, nevertheless considered that Kamila Valieva "had not been able to establish", with sufficiently convincing evidence, that she did not had not “intentionally” doped.
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The affair, which caused a scandal in the middle of the 2022 Beijing Olympics due to the long delay between the sampling carried out by RUSADA on December 25, 2021 and its analysis by the Stockholm laboratory approved by WADA, is however not finished.
Kamila Valieva still has the possibility of seizing the Swiss Federal Court within 30 days, only for limited legal reasons.
Above all, the CAS did not decide the consequences of her retroactive disqualification, while Valieva had time to win Olympic gold in the team event with the Russians before her positive test was revealed: almost two years later, the medal ceremony has still not been organized.
Kamila Valieva will have served her suspension on December 25, 2025 and will therefore be able to participate in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.