Court of Arbitration for Sport bans Russian skater Kamila Valieva for 4 years

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Court of Arbitration for Sport handed a four-year ban to Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva.

A statement by the international body on Monday said that Valieva has been found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation and would be ineligible to compete for a period of four years starting from Dec. 25, 2021.

The court ordered the "forfeiture of any titles, awards, medals, profits, prizes, and appearance money" from that date.

The decision is final and binding, but the parties have "the right to file an appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal within 30 days on limited grounds," the statement concluded.

Commenting on the decision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov defined the ruling as “politicized."

“If there are any appeal mechanisms and so on, then, of course, they should be involved. We must protect the interests of our athletes to the end,” he further said.

Meanwhile, the World Anti-Doping Agency welcomed the decision, saying it was “in the interests of fairness for athletes and clean sport.”

“The doping of children is unforgivable,” it added.

Valieva tested positive for a banned substance before the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, according to the International Testing Agency (ITA), where she led Russia to a gold medal in the team competition.

The Russian skater, who was then 15 years old, tested positive for trimetazidine, a metabolic agent that helps with the treatment of angina and vertigo, from a sample collected during the Russian Figure Skating Championships in St. Petersburg.​​​​​​​