NEW DELHI: The
Court of Arbitration for Sport
(CAS) has maintained its decision to impose a
four-year ban
on
Russian figure skater
Kamila Valieva for testing positive for trimetazidine. Valieva's attempt to overturn the ban, based on the claim that she unknowingly ingested the prohibited substance through a strawberry dessert made by her grandfather, was deemed insufficient by the CAS.
The 15-year-old skater's legal team presented multiple scenarios to explain the positive test results ahead of the 2022
Winter Olympics
in Beijing.
One of these, referred to as the "Grandfather explanation," asserted that Valieva's grandfather contaminated the chopping board used to make her dessert with his trimetazidine medication.
The CAS, however, found significant shortcomings and unanswered questions in the presented evidence. In the 129-page report, the court stated, "The panel has decided that the athlete did not discharge her burden of proving … that her Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRV) was not intentional."
CNN Sport contributor
Christine Brennan
summarized the decision, stating, "Valieva claimed the banned substance that was in her body got there because she ate her grandfather’s strawberry dessert. CAS didn’t fall for it." Last week, the CAS panel had handed down a four-year suspension and the disqualification of Valieva's Olympic results.
As a consequence of the upheld ban, the US Figure Skating team will be awarded a gold medal for its performance at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The Russian Olympic Committee, originally in first place with Valieva's results, has now been relegated to third in the re-ranking. Japan will receive the silver medal, while Canada remains in fourth place, expressing disappointment over not being awarded the bronze.
(Inputs from agencies)
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