(Lausanne) The sports doping case involving Russian skater Kamila Valieva will be processed for two additional days in November, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said on Thursday.
The highest sporting court in the world has completed a closed-door hearing which spanned three days and is due to resume on November 9 and 10.
“They (the judges) ordered the production of additional documents and, in order to allow the parties to produce these documents, they decided to add two additional hearing days,” we could read in a CAS press release.
Valieva, who was 15 at the Olympics and is now 17, was caught in a drug test whose results were announced during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Due to new delays in this case, a verdict is not expected until next year.
Nine American skaters anxiously await the decision, since the Russian team, for which Valieva skated and which won the Olympic team event in Beijing, finished just ahead of them.
Valieva still maintains that her positive test for a banned substance was obtained by accidental contamination — possibly from a glass or plate — from her grandfather’s medication.
The first Russian anti-doping court that analyzed her case during the Olympics in February 2022 mentioned that Valieva and her legal team “intend to carry out a thorough investigation in order to present results” during possible hearings in this case .
This possible hearing began more than 19 months after a CAS committee allowed Valieva to continue her sporting activities at the Beijing Games despite a positive doping test on her file.
This appeal hearing was requested by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Skating Union. These organizations challenged a Russian ruling handed down in January which found that Valieva, as a minor at the time, was not responsible for the situation and that she should retain her Olympic results.
WADA asked the three CAS judges to suspend Valieva for four years — until December 2025 — and to invalidate all of her Olympic results.
“We want a fair verdict in this case, based on facts,” said WADA spokesperson James Fitzgerald earlier this week, adding that the agency, whose head office is located in Montreal , “will continue to work so that there are no more undue delays in the delivery of the verdict. »