CAS disqualifies figure skater Valieva for four years

With one decision, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) most likely deprived the Russian team of the gold medal won at last year’s Olympics in Beijing in the team figure skating tournament, and also ended the career of the brightest and most popular Russian figure skater in recent years. CAS, having examined one of the most complex doping cases in the history of sports, prescribed the most severe possible punishment for Kamila Valieva – a four-year disqualification, without taking into account either the athlete’s young age at the time of the violation, or the fact that the drug found in her pre-Olympic sample could hardly help improve results.

Court of Arbitration for Sport made public the operative part of the decision in the case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. It caused a shock effect in the Russian sports community. The fact is that CAS disqualified the athlete for four years, despite the fact that disqualification means medal losses for the Russian team as a whole, and despite the fact that the version that Valieva will get off with a much lenient punishment seemed extremely relevant until recently.

The process, the outcome of which was summed up by the highest sports arbitration authority, was virtually unprecedented in complexity. The fact that the banned drug trimetazidine was found in the sample of Kamila Valieva, at that time the undisputed leader in world women’s single skating, taken in December 2021 at the Russian Championships in St. Petersburg, became known a month and a half later, during the Olympics in Beijing , shortly after the end of the team tournament. The Russian team won it, ahead of the Americans, largely thanks to Valieva. She brought the team 20 points out of 74, winning both the short and free programs.

It turned out that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), having learned about the sample late (it was tested by a laboratory in Stockholm, which explained the delay in the test due to quarantine due to the coronavirus epidemic), temporarily suspended the athlete from competition, but the suspension was successfully challenged in an independent disciplinary committee. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which, because of the story with Kamila Valieva, postponed the official award ceremony for the winners of the Beijing team tournament, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), as well as the International Skating Union (ISU) did not agree with its position and filed an appeal to CAS. The protests were rejected.

Then the CAS stated that a temporary suspension could not be imposed on Kamila Valieva due to exceptional circumstances. The fact is that, as a minor athlete (she turned 16 in April 2022), Valieva, in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code, was a so-called protected person at the time of taking the sample and participating in the Olympics. This status implies the possibility of special treatment of an athlete in situations where he commits a violation of the regulations, for example, in the form of a significant, even warning, mitigation of punishment.

Kamila Valieva was allowed to compete in the individual Olympic tournament, but only took fourth place in it.

RUSADA, which international sports authorities ordered to conduct an investigation into the incident with the figure skater, reported its completion in mid-September 2022. And later, the RUSADA disciplinary committee, which is formally an independent body, having stated that Kamila Valieva had committed a doping violation, did not find any signs of “guilt or negligence” in her actions and considered it unacceptable to apply any sanctions against the skater other than the cancellation of the results shown at that time. the day she tested positive. So, in his opinion, the only punishment for Kamila Valieva could be deprivation of her gold won at the St. Petersburg Russian Championship.

Three structures did not agree with this interpretation. Moreover, together with WADA and ISU, RUSADA also appealed to CAS. Their claims were different. WADA sought a maximum four-year disqualification for Kamila Valieva with the cancellation of all results shown after the positive test. The ISU agreed to a two-year, almost symbolic, suspension. RUSADA in fact only sought a guilty plea for the skater with “appropriate consequences,” which, as it indicated, could be limited to a warning. From the documents published by CAS, it followed that Kamila Valieva still insists on her innocence, and her side agrees to a “compromise” option – similar to the one proposed by the ISU.

At the same time, the impression was created that the likelihood of arbitration success, at least relative, for the Russian athlete was quite high.

Potential mitigating circumstances were at hand – in the form of a young age, expert opinions about the ineffectiveness of trimetazidine as a performance-enhancing agent, and even two precedents. In 2018, CAS radically reduced the disqualifications of American swimmer Madisyn Cox and Russian bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva, in whose samples the same drug was found in a concentration insignificant as in Kamila Valieva. But he treated the skater extremely harshly, pointing out that in order to soften the sanctions, she “had to prove” at least the “unintentional” nature of the violation, but failed to do so.

For Kamila Valieva herself, such a disqualification, despite the fact that it is counted “retrospectively”, from December 25, 2021, and therefore most of the suspension period has already been left behind, still looks like a terrible blow. Unlike other figure skaters of the Russian national team who were ahead of her in Beijing in the individual tournament – winners of gold and silver medals Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, who in the past months only skated in shows, she continued to actively compete in the domestic arena (competing internationally is not allowed by the ISU introduced after the beginning of a special military operation in Ukraine and sanctions that have not yet been lifted). As was the case at the Russian Championships in 2022 and 2023, she is often ahead of even younger athletes, such as Sofya Akatieva and Adeliya Petrosyan, but Kamila Valieva, who took silver and bronze at the national championships, still confidently remains among the elite and retains elite technical content coupled with enormous popularity among fans. If Russian figure skaters were returned to top competitions, she would definitely be a contender for their awards.

Now she will have to lose competitive practice for almost two years. And in the case of figure skaters Kamila Valieva’s age, such pauses usually mean the collapse of a career.

It is not surprising that the CAS verdict caused a wave of emotional statements from representatives of the Russian sports and political establishment, calling it “unfair”, “savage” and “devoid of common sense.” Even the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov commented on the decision. He preferred to use the term “politicized.” Sports manager Andrei Mitkov partly agreed with him. “It was clear that in the current political situation, the interpretation of CAS could only be as harsh as possible. However, it was clear that, whatever one may say, there was a violation, and that it would not go unpunished. At the same time, it is obvious to me that the defense failed the process: after all, there was something to cling to even in the current difficult realities,” the expert said.

There is nothing strange in the fact that WADA was completely satisfied with the verdict. In a statement dedicated to it, the agency described “child doping” as an “unforgivable” atrocity and called on governments to consider criminalizing the supply of performance-enhancing drugs to minors.

After the announcement of the CAS decision, one important intrigue did not completely die. It is connected with the medals won by Kamila Valieva. The CAS conclusion states that her punishment means the cancellation of all the athlete’s results shown since December 25, 2021. However, the arbitration stipulated that “the consequences associated with the retrospective disqualification of Valieva from past competitions, including the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, are not within the scope of this arbitration procedure and must be considered by the relevant sports organizations concerned.”

In other words, CAS transferred the determination of the fate of the Beijing gold of the Russian team and Kamila Valieva, who, apparently, will lose the highest award of the pre-Olympic European Championship, to the ISU and the IOC.

And the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation Oleg Matytsin (quoted by TASS) immediately appealed to them to be “independent and unbiased” in the matter of the Russian award: “We have always adhered and adhere to zero tolerance for doping and are doing everything necessary for effective anti-doping activities in Russia, this has been confirmed more than once by the decisions of the UNESCO convention. At the same time, we emphasize that not a single athlete should suffer from a biased attitude for the sake of someone’s political interests; international authorities should prioritize the protection of athletes, which, as we see today, is no longer a priority for some of them.”

However, the party directly affected by the fate of gold seems to have no doubt that everything will work out in its favor. In a statement, the CEO of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPCSarah Hirshland, who described the CAS verdict as a “victory” not only for her country’s athletes but also for “clean competition athletes around the world,” said she “looks forward to the day when I can celebrate these athletes with all my heart.”

True, it must be admitted that if the “extra” gold allows the American team to jump from fourth place into the top three in the medal standings of the Olympics, displacing the Chinese from it, then it will not have any fundamental impact on the position of the Russian team. And with five gold medals, she will not go anywhere from ninth position.

Alexey Dospehov