Russia will try to return the gold in the team figure skating tournament at the 2022 Olympics: Canada has filed an appeal

There are no precedents for such proceedings in the history of this sport.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has registered four appeals against the decision of the International Skating Union (ISU) to redistribute the results of the team figure skating competition at the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing. Canada filed one appeal: from the skaters, the figure skating federation and the NOC of Canada. Russia filed three appeals: from the ROC, from the FFKKR, from Russian skaters.

As you know, immediately after the announcement of the results of the investigation into the Kamila Valieva case, the ISU did not delay the issue and awarded our skaters third place in the team tournament. That is, Russia’s result in women’s single skating was reset, but did not change the points scored by other participants. And he decided that the Canadians, who came fourth in Beijing, would not receive a medal. Because even after crossing out Kamila’s results on the Olympic ice (Valieva brought the team 20 points out of 74), they were still 1 point behind the Russian team.

The ISU believes that the first place instead of the Russians is currently taken by the US team (65 points), the Japanese are second (63), and the Russian team (54) has dropped to third place.

The ROC immediately announced that it would appeal the loss of our athletes’ gold medal in the team tournament. “We proceed from the fact that, in accordance with the current, applicable ISU rules, the consequences of a decision on sanctions against an individual athlete, in this case Kamila Valieva, cannot be a basis for reviewing the results of a team tournament. Our legal position is based, among other things, on existing precedents in the practice of CAS,” the organization said.

The Russian Figure Skating Federation also stated that it strongly disagrees with the CAS decision to disqualify Valieva for four years and with the deprivation of Russian athletes of gold medals in team competitions at the Beijing Games.

There are no precedents for such proceedings in the history of figure skating. The ISU, when organizing the team tournament (and it debuted in Sochi 2014), did not prescribe its actions in the event of the disqualification of one of the team members. Therefore, there will be a battle of lawyers again. I would like to believe that on our part it is not prepared as it was in the case of the defense of Kamila Valieva.