Russian and Canadian skaters are challenging the podium of the team event of the 2022 Olympic Games (OG) before the sporting justice system established after the suspension of Russian Kamila Valieva for doping, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Monday.
After two years of imbroglio, at the end of January the International Skating Federation (ISU) withdrew Kamila Valieva’s points from the Russian team, initially first in the event, demoting it to third place behind the Americans, in gold, and the Japanese in silver.
This decision, rendered in the wake of the Russian prodigy’s conviction to a four-year retroactive suspension for doping from December 25, 2021, left the Canadians in fourth place in the event, while they hoped to recover the medal of bronze.
The eight members of the Canadian team skating team therefore approached the CAS to claim third place, supported in their approach by the Canadian skating federation and the Canadian Olympic committee.
But through three separate proceedings, the Russian Olympic Committee, the Russian Skating Federation and six Russian skaters — including Kamila Valieva — also challenged the ISU decision, this time to ask to be reinstated at the head of the event , therefore to be awarded the gold medal.
“Given the state of progress of the procedures, no indication can be given as to the date of a possible hearing,” specifies the CAS in a press release.
For its part, the International Olympic Committee has not yet indicated the date on which the medal ceremony would be held – and in what location – while the Americans have called for the organization of a podium in Paris on the occasion of the 2024 Olympics this summer.
Kamila Valieva, then aged 15, had tested positive by the Russian anti-doping agency (Rusada) for trimetazidine, a substance banned since 2014 on the grounds that it improves blood circulation, during the Russian championships that she won at the end of 2021 in Saint Petersburg.
But Rusada being suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), his sample had been analyzed by the laboratory approved by WADA in Stockholm. Disorganized by the Covid-19 pandemic, this laboratory communicated the result in the middle of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, after the team skating event.