Kamila Valieva blamed a strawberry dessert for the constructive doping take a look at that led to her four-year ban from the game this week.
The Court docket of Arbitration for Sport has printed its full report of the decision towards the Russian determine skater, who claimed the meals was inadvertently contaminated by her grandfather’s coronary heart remedy.
Wada acknowledged that “doping of youngsters is unforgivable” in mild of the information, given Valieva was then aged 15.
She examined constructive for the banned substance trimetazidine throughout the Russian nationwide championships in December 2021 emerged throughout the next yr’s Winter Video games in Beijing.
Valieva proposed three attainable explanations for the constructive take a look at, all of which revolved round a strawberry dessert she claimed her grandfather, Gennady Solovyov, gave her within the night previous to her departure to St Petersburg.
In submitted proof, Valieva referenced her grandfather’s coronary heart remedy and added: “Most likely, this capsule acquired right into a dessert, which he often provides to me.
“Or, I noticed just a few occasions by accident, that he crushed the drugs with the knife and dissolves them in a glass, and took them. So I might need drunk from the identical glass or there, at residence, I might need eaten one thing from the identical chopping board and so forth.”
Nonetheless, the World Anti-Doping Company (WADA), one in all three our bodies to pursue the CAS verdict together with Worldwide Skating Union (ISU) and the Russian Anti-Doping Company (RUSADA), dismissed the reason.
In response to the CAS judgement, WADA submitted that it was “inherently implausible” that an athlete at this elite stage would take a selfmade strawberry dessert together with her throughout Russia and eat it throughout a contest interval.
WADA additionally questioned the dearth of medical proof regarding Solovyov’s coronary heart situation, saying it was “practically unattainable” for him to have had such a situation “with out there being any contemporaneous proof of it”.
In its verdict, the CAS panel broadly concurred with WADA’s submission, additionally questioning the dearth of proof of Solovyov’s prescription to TMZ, and inconsistencies in submitted proof regarding existence of the strawberry dessert.
It concluded that it was “not persuaded” by the reason as a result of “there are too many shortcomings within the proof, and too many unanswered questions, for the panel to resolve that her account is extra doubtless than not”.
It additional discovered Valieva and her staff had not managed to determine that she didn’t commit the anti-doping rule violation deliberately, and that the consequence needs to be a four-year ban, backdated to the time of the failed take a look at, that means it is going to run till Christmas Day 2025.
Valieva has additionally forfeited all medals gained throughout her backdated interval of disqualification, together with the staff gold gained by Russia in Beijing.