Russian determine skater Kamila Valieva swears it was her grandpa’s errors in getting ready a strawberry dessert that led to a optimistic doping check.
She was simply 15 years outdated when she discovered herself on the centre of a drug scandal on the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, during which a drug check she had beforehand taken in 2021 got here to mild, the place she had examined optimistic for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ).
The Court docket of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Wednesday printed the 129-page detailed ruling from its three judges to clarify why they imposed a four-year ban final week on Valieva — and the doc options the phrase “strawberry” a staggering 43 instances, stories The Related Press.
Valieva’s authorized staff tried to persuade the CAS that her grandfather “by chance dropped a capsule into the dessert whereas he was getting ready it or as a result of there have been crushed residues of a (trimetazidine) pill on the chopping board he used to arrange the dessert.”
They claimed that her grandfather used the drug as a coronary heart remedy and that she was the unlucky sufferer of cross-contamination.
Kamila Valieva falls within the ladies’s free skate program throughout the determine skating competitors on the 2022 Winter Olympics on Feb. 17, 2022, in Beijing.
Bernat Armangue / The Related Press
However the CAS judges weren’t shopping for it.
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“There are too many shortcomings within the proof, and too many unanswered questions, for the panel to resolve that her account is extra seemingly than not,” the judges wrote.
Valieva ate the dessert forward of competing within the 2021 Russian nationwide competitors, it was claimed, and he or she subsequently examined optimistic for TMZ throughout the occasion. Nevertheless, the outcomes of the optimistic doping check didn’t emerge till after she helped the Russians win gold on the Winter Video games six weeks later.
A Russian tribunal successfully cleared her of any blame, and he or she was allowed to take part within the Video games’ particular person occasion, however the ruling was appealed by the World Anti-Doping Company and despatched to the CAS, who disqualified the skater final month and dominated that the gold medal can be stripped from the Russian staff and ought to be given to the second-place U.S. staff.
It additionally implies that the Japanese staff ought to be upgraded to silver.
The IOC is accountable for reallocating medals and its government board is subsequent scheduled to fulfill in March.
Valieva was one of many youngest athletes to have a optimistic check revealed on the Olympics, prompting questions concerning the position of the adults round her and the persevering with scourge of Russian doping in worldwide sport. It additionally fueled a debate over elevating the age restrict for determine skating.
Valieda’s ban has been backdated to Dec. 25, 2021 — when the optimistic pattern was collected — that means it’s going to expire lower than two months forward of the following Winter Olympics in Italy.
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