Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva banned for four years by Court of Arbitration for Sport

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva has been found guilty of an anti-doping violation by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and been banned from competition for four years.

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva has been found guilty of an anti-doping violation by Switzerland’s Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and has received a four-year ban from competitions. The ban, which ends a long-running saga between anti-doping bodies and the 17-year-old Valieva, is backdated to December 25, 2021, the date of the sample collection. Following the figure skating team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, it emerged that the then-15-year-old had tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart medication which can boost endurance. In its announcement on Monday, CAS said that the ban includes “the disqualification [of] all competitive results” achieved by Valieva since the positive test. In Beijing, Valieva’s Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team had finished first ahead of the US and Japan – with Canada finishing fourth – and no medals were subsequently awarded due to the doping controversy. In its statement, CAS said that it had no “scope” to decide what will happen to the final standings of the team event, a responsibility that relies with the International Skating Union (ISU).