The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) will deliver its opinion on the case of Russian skater Kamila Valieva, whose positive test was revealed during the Beijing Olympics in 2022, at the end of January 2024, it announced on Friday. The panel, which heard the final arguments this Friday, “will now deliberate” and it will announce its decision and the reasons to the parties “by the end of January 2024”, specifies the press release. The closed hearing resumed on November 9, with the referees considering that they needed additional information after a first round at the end of September. The three judges then heard the young Russian skater, aged 17, by videoconference as well as experts and witnesses.
Valieva was 15 years old in 2022 and due to her age should have been given complete confidentiality, according to the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). But the fact that the positive sample, taken in 2021, was revealed during the Olympics and after Valieva’s victory in the team event, thanks to the first women’s quadruple jump in the history of the Games, gave the case a great impact. A tiny concentration of trimetazidine, banned by WADA since 2014 because it is suspected of promoting blood circulation, was found in the young skater.
At the beginning of January 2023, the independent disciplinary commission of the Russian anti-doping authority (RUSADA) revealed that it had not imposed any suspension on Valieva, considering that she had committed “no fault or negligence”, and the person concerned had been able to resume the competitions. RUSADA nevertheless appealed to the CAS, hoping for an appropriate sanction which could be limited to a reprimand. The Russian body thus joined WADA and the International Skating Federation (ISU) who also brought the matter before the CAS, demanding for their part up to four years of suspension and the cancellation of all the skater’s results since the end of 2021.
