Young Russian skater Kamila Valieva has the right to continue participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics despite a positive doping test, the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) said on Friday.
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Valieva “has the right to train and compete without restrictions, unless the Court of Arbitration for Sport decides otherwise,” the Russian committee said in a statement.
Kamila Valieva, 15, is at the heart of a case that has rocked the Beijing Winter Olympics since the announcement that she tested positive at the end of December for trimetazidine, a banned product.
For the Russian Olympic Committee, since this positive test took place before the Games, there is no reason to question the gold medal won on Monday by the Russian figure skating team of which Valieva is a member.
“The results of the athlete and his team during the Olympic Games are not subject to automatic review,” insisted the ROC, which also specifies that doping controls carried out on Valieva after the European Championships in mid-January and during the Beijing Olympics came out negative.
The Russian Figure Skating Federation, for its part, said on Friday that it had “no doubts about the honesty and integrity” of its athletes.
The case comes as all Russian athletes participate in these games under the flag of the ROC, Russia as a country being banned from the Olympics because of a gigantic state doping scandal, which Moscow has been denying for years. years, denouncing an anti-Russian plot.
This affair began on Wednesday when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that the medal ceremony for the figure skating team event scheduled for the previous day had been postponed for “legal” reasons, without giving further details.
The ITA, the body in charge of controls during the Olympics, announced Friday that the Russian prodigy was tested positive on December 25 during the Russian Championships in Saint-Petersburg by the Russian anti-doping agency.
The Russian anti-doping agency Rusada, whose reputation is tarnished by repeated scandals, provisionally suspended the skater on Tuesday after receiving the positive results, but Valieva appealed this decision on Wednesday and obtained the lifting of her suspension, which allows him to continue to participate in the Games.
However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that it was going to appeal this decision before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), without waiting for the reasons given by the Russian anti-doping agency (Rusada), because “a decision is necessary before February 15”, the day of the next event in which Valieva can participate.