The head of the IOC called for sanctions against the entourage of athletes convicted of doping

President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach commented on the disqualification of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. He called for respect for the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and to pay attention to the athletes’ surroundings.

“I can only urge all organizations responsible for the fight against doping, all agencies to look very carefully at their environment. We need to be sure that when imposing sanctions, we determined the environment, and, again, we applied even stricter sanctions to the environment when it comes to minors,” Mr. Bach said at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in South Korea (quoted by TASS).

January 29 CAS published the decision about the disqualification of Kamila Valieva for four years. The period of suspension from competitions starts from December 25, 2021, when the skater passed a positive doping test for trimetazidine. The court also ruled that the athlete will be stripped of all competition results and awards she received after passing the positive test. After the decision was made, the International Skating Union awarded the Russian team third place instead of first in the team figure skating tournament at the Beijing Olympics in 2022. The coach of the Russian figure skater Eteri Tutberidze, commenting on the CAS decision, statedthat all its athletes “were and remain clean.” According to her, after two years of investigation, the origin of the drug in the doping test was not announced.

Read more about the decision in the Kommersant publication. “The Destroyer Union”.

Leonid Uvarchev