Olympic skater's doping saga drags on with hearing Thursday. But debacle is far from over.
The arduous and embarrassing Kamila Valieva Russian doping saga hits its 640th day Thursday — and it’s not anywhere close to being done.
Valieva’s Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing in Lausanne, Switzerland, which abruptly adjourned Sept. 28 when the three-member CAS panel ordered “the production of further documentation,” resumes Thursday and is expected to conclude by Friday.
But no one should expect a decision on Valieva’s guilt or innocence this week, or anytime soon.
A final ruling by the CAS panel is expected to come sometime in the next few months, perhaps in December but much more likely after the holidays in early 2024. If that’s the case, the arbitrators’ decision could come close to marking the two-year anniversary of the team figure skating competition at the Beijing Olympics Feb. 7, 2022, when Russia won the gold medal, the United States won the silver medal and Japan won the bronze.
The following day, those results were thrown into disarray when Valieva, the then-15-year-old star of the Russian team, was found to have tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine six weeks earlier at the Russian championships, forcing the unprecedented cancellation of the event’s medal ceremony.
To this day, the athletes from the U.S., Japan and of course Russia still have not received their medals. One of the loveliest and simplest tasks performed in the Olympic world, the presentation of the medals to the athletes who won them, has turned into an international debacle.
Why? Because the sole organization charged with conducting the Valieva investigation, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency — an organization that was suspended from 2015-2018 for helping Russian athletes cheat — dithered and delayed through most of the rest of 2022, setting the process back by months.
“This is a continuation of the travesty that has undermined the confidence that athletes have in the system,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said in an interview Wednesday.
“Justice hasn’t just been denied for the athletes who have been waiting nearly two years now for their medals. Justice has been defeated. The athletes will never be able to replace the moment they would have had on the Olympic medal podium.”
It is believed that the most recent delay — the sudden adjournment of the CAS hearing in late September — was caused by a request by Valieva’s legal team to see documents that had not been originally included in the proceedings but were known to exist.
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“Of course, we all are for full and complete due process,” Tygart said on Sept. 28, “but this reeks of just further manipulation by the Russians and the system has to change to ensure this cannot continue to happen.”
Once the Valieva hearing concludes, the arbitrators will deliberate and write their decision. When that ruling is announced, the International Skating Union, the worldwide governing body for figure skating, will then decide the final results of the 2022 team figure skating competition.
If Valieva, considered a minor or “protected person” under world anti-doping rules because she was 15 at the time, is found to be innocent, the results likely will stand: Russia, U.S., Japan.
If she is deemed guilty, it’s likely the U.S. would move up to the gold medal, followed by Japan with the silver and fourth-place Canada moving up to take the bronze.
When all this will happen, and how the skaters will receive their medals, is anyone’s guess. One idea that has been floated is to honor the figure skating medal winners with a ceremony at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games next summer, but if Russia keeps the gold medal, there is no way that will happen as long as Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on.
One thing we do know is that the next Winter Olympics will be held in Italy beginning Feb. 6, 2026. Presumably, the skaters will have received their medals by then.