Young Russian skater Kamila Valieva, suspended for four years last week for doping, spoke of a “strawberry dessert” contaminated with heart medication, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The 17-year-old prodigy's line of defense, accidental contamination with a banned substance, has been known since the affair broke out in the middle of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, of which she was one of the big announced stars.
But the exact scenario put forward by the teenager was missing, who proposed several: “sabotage” to harm her, a contaminated food supplement, or a “domestic interaction” with the man who drives her to training every day. and whom she considers her grandfather although they have no biological link, details the CAS sentence published Wednesday evening.
According to this 129-page decision, the main avenue put forward for her defense is a “strawberry dessert” prepared for her by this man on December 21, 2021, a few days before the Russian championships in Saint Petersburg, on the occasion of which she tested positive for trimetazidine.
Retroactively suspended for four years
This substance, banned since 2014 by the World Anti-Doping Agency due to its supposed effects on blood circulation, is also prescribed for certain heart disorders, in particular to cure angina pectoris.
However, according to the skater, Mr. Solovyov had heart surgery twice, was treated twice a day with trimetazidine “approximately since 2018”, and was able to “use the same board” to crush his tablets then cut “the bananas and strawberries” used in the dessert prepared for her.
The arbitration panel, however, considered that Kamila Valieva had not sufficiently convincingly proven this contamination, nor the precise moment when she ingested this dessert - on the train taking her from Moscow to Saint Petersburg - and retroactively suspended her. for four years from the date of its inspection.