Russian figure skater to lose Olympic skating gold to US and banned for four years over doping violation

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, once a 15-year-old gold medal phenom, was announced on Monday to be disqualified from the 2022 Beijing Olympics figure skating competition after having been found guilty of an anti-doping violation by Switzerland’s Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Valieva will be banned from Olympic competitions for four years, backdating to Dec. 25, 2021.

Her Russian Olympic Committee team had finished first ahead of the United States and Japan. She had set nine world records during her career and became the first woman to complete a quadruple jump at the Olympic team event.

In December 2021, she tested positive for the banned heart medicine trimetazidine, or TMZ, at the Russian national championships, just weeks before the Winter Olympics. Her test had been delayed due to a COVID-19 outbreak among workers at a doping laboratory in Stockholm, Sweden.

Her legal team was hoping to clear Valieva’s name when the team claimed that her positive drug test may have come from a glass of water containing trace amounts of her grandfather’s heart medication. In December 2022, a Russian Anti-Doping Agency commission insisted that Valieva bore no “fault or negligence,” and the athlete maintained that the drug was ingested accidentally. The use of TMZ is sometimes used to increase endurance and reduce fatigue.

According to a World Anti-Doping Agency document, Valieva’s mother had testified at one of the hearings that her daughter took hypoxen to treat heart variations, but the use of TMZ had not been disclosed, and the WADA document showed that “there is inadequate evidence that her grandfather was even using trimetazidine.”

“As we know, Russia has hijacked the Games since 2014 where it was caught red-handed running a state-sponsored doping scheme that robbed clean athletes around the world. Here, yet again, those entrusted to protect the Games and athletes have allowed Russia to jeopardize the well-being of its own athletes while robbing clean athletes and fans of an honest, fair, and authentic Olympic competition,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart said on Monday.

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Tygart is now calling on the International Skating Union to strip the Russian team of its medal and move the award for the USA team up to gold.

“It is now imperative for the ISU to effectuate the technical decision of her disqualification from the Games and redistribute the medals to the right winners,” Tygart added.

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