The banned Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva blamed her positive doping test on a strawberry dessert prepared by her grandfather on a chopping board he used to crush his medication pills, the court of arbitration for sport revealed on Wednesday.
Cas published its arbitral award on Wednesday, setting out the reasons for the four-year doping ban handed down to Valieva in January.
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The highest court in sport had found Valieva guilty of committing an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV), following the finding of trimetazidine (TMZ) in a sample collected from her in December 2021, during the Russian national championships. Valieva was only 15 when she found herself at the centre of a doping scandal at the 2022 Winter Olympics after her positive test came to light during the Games.
Cas said that in her submissions Valieva asserted that the prohibited substance entered her body through the consumption of the dessert prepared by her grandfather on a board he used to crush his pills containing TMZ, which is a drug used to prevent angina.
“The Cas panel determined that this explanation was not corroborated by any concrete evidence and that the athlete was not able to establish that she had not committed the ADRV intentionally,” the court said. Cas went on to say that as Valieva, who is now 17, failed to establish that she did not commit the ADRV intentionally, and as the “no significant fault or negligence” criterion was not met, there was no basis to treat her any differently from an adult athlete.
All of Valieva’s competitive results since the date of the offence were voided, including the gold medal she helped the Russian Olympic Committee to win in the team event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. Russia said it would appeal against the decision to strip ROC of the medal.