Despite the disqualification of Russian Kamila Valieva in a doping case, her figure skating team will keep the bronze medal at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2022, narrowly ahead of the Canadian team, according to what was announced on Tuesday. governing body of this sport.
On Monday, it was alleged that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling on Kamila Valieva’s disqualification would mean Canada would get the bronze medal in the team event, which Russia had originally won.
But the next day, the International Skating Union released an amended points table from the Beijing competition that removed Ms. Valieva’s maximum 10 points for each of her two events, but did not add points to the other teams behind She.
The United States are therefore the new Olympic champions and Japan goes from bronze to silver, but the demoted Russians still obtain bronze with only one point ahead of Canada, which is fourth.
Canada still obtained eight points out of 10 in the women’s short program and free skating sections, where Japan finished second each time behind Ms. Valieva.
Canada’s points total remained at 53 and the Russians’ points fell from 74 to 54 — good enough for the bronze medal.
The Canadian Skating Federation can likely challenge the International Skating Union’s decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. On Monday, the Canadian organization wrote: “Skate Canada applauds the decision rendered by the CAS concerning the doping offense of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. This decision underlines the importance of rigorous anti-doping measures and the need for continued vigilance, in order to protect the integrity of figure skating and all sports.”
For its part, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) “applauded the decision of the CAS to disqualify Kamila Valieva from the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games […] which demonstrates the importance of rigorous anti-doping measures in sport, and we recognize that this is another landmark case in the battle for clean sport and respect for the Olympic values. »
At the 2022 Olympic Games, the Canadian squad consisted of Maddie Schizas, Piper Gilles, Paul Poirier, Kirsten Moore-Towers, Michael Marinaro, Eric Radford, Vanessa James and Roman Sadovsky.
Kamila Valieva, who will turn 18 next April, has been disqualified for four years from all her events since December 2021.