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Posted: 2024-01-29 15:06:53

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva has been disqualified from the 2022 Olympics, almost two years after her doping case caused turmoil at the Beijing Games.

The verdict from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) means Russia is set to be stripped of the gold medal in figure skating's team event.

The United States finished second and is set to be named Olympic champion instead.

The International Olympic Committee decided not to present any medals for the event in Beijing, where the then-15-year-old Valieva was the star performer hours before her positive test for a banned heart medicine was revealed.

CAS said it upheld appeals led by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which asked the court to disqualify Valieva from the Olympics and ban her.

A Russian sports tribunal had cleared her of any blame.

The CAS judges banned her for four years, through December 2025 — about seven weeks before the next Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

The US team took silver in Beijing and is set to be upgraded to gold. Japan took bronze and Canada placed fourth.

The IOC is responsible for reallocating medals and its executive board is next scheduled to meet in March.

Valieva's lawyers had argued she was contaminated by traces of the trimetazidine medication they said her grandfather used.

"Having carefully considered all the evidence put before it," the court said in a statement, "the CAS panel concluded that Ms. Valieva was not able to establish, on the balance of probabilities and on the basis of the evidence before the Panel, that she had not committed the (doping violation) intentionally."

A figure skater puts her hands on her hips and looks disappointed

The test result was revealed hours after she competed in a team event at the Beijing Olympics. (Getty Images: Nikolay Muratkin/Anadolu Agency)

The judges decided that, according to Russian anti-doping rules, Valieva could not benefit from having been a minor at the time of the positive test.

There was "no basis under the rules to treat them any differently from an adult athlete," said the court, which did not publish its detailed verdict pending a review of confidentiality issues.

Olympic officials shocked by 'tremendous coldness' of coaches

The case provoked legal chaos at the Olympics because Valieva's sample, taken six weeks earlier at the Russian national championships, was not notified by a laboratory in Sweden until hours after she competed in the team event on February 7, 2022.

Valieva continued to skate at the Olympics after rulings by a Russian tribunal and a separate CAS panel did not hold her responsible as a minor.

The intense scrutiny on Valieva led to an error-filled skate in the individual event, where she had been favoured for gold but dropped to fourth place.

The drama continued when she left the ice.

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