Kamila Valieva has been banned for four years over the 2022 Olympic doping case

Kamila Valieva, the Russian teenage figure skater whose positive doping test rocked her sport at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, was banned from competition for four years by the country's top sports court on Monday.

The punishment, announced by a three-member arbitration panel authorized by the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, was related to a contaminated sample given by Valieva, who was 15 at the time, during a match. The positive result emerged only two months later – in the middle of the Olympic Games, and just a day after Valieva led Russia to victory in the team competition.

The ban will apply retroactively to December 25, 2021, the arbitrators ruled, meaning it will end in 2025, just in time for Valieva to compete in the next Winter Olympics, in 2026. Now 17, she was given the order to “forfeit all titles.” , prizes, medals, winnings, awards and appearance money” earned after her positive doping sample was collected.

Valieva had claimed that she had accidentally taken a heart drug, Trimetazidine, which had been prescribed to her grandfather. Russia's anti-doping body had cleared her of any wrongdoing, not because of her reasoning for taking the banned substance, but because of her age. She said she could not be held responsible because she was a minor at the time and therefore a “protected person.” .”

In Monday's ruling, the CAS panel rejected the premise that minors competing in adult competitions should be treated differently from their rivals.

“There is no basis under the rules to treat them differently than an adult athlete,” the arbitrators wrote.

The decision, nearly two years after the end of the Beijing Games, is the latest twist in a years-long battle that has drawn together threads familiar to followers of the recent Olympics: athletic greatness, Russian doping, bitter accusations and whispers of cover-ups . But in essence, the case also highlights global sport's inability to enforce doping rules and punish athletes and countries in a timely manner.

The furor surrounding Valieva's status cast a shadow over much of the Olympics and frustration, sparking anger among Russia's rivals. Many, including a star-studded team from the United States who felt their team gold had been stripped, were angry that not only had their competitions been disrupted, but athletes had been denied the opportunity to celebrate their achievements at the Games.

The court's ruling will have consequences for some of those other skaters. Because Valieva competed in the team event, Russia is stripped of the top spot, with victory awarded to the American team that finished second in Beijing. Japan is elevated from bronze to silver and Canada, which finished fourth, receives the bronze medal.

The results of that event were one of the more controversial points of the Games. As there was no clarity about Valieva's status, no medal ceremony was held – the first time in Olympic history that no medals were awarded in a completed event. That meant all the teams left China without their moment on the podium or their medals.

In the years since the Games ended, and as the case became mired in disputes between federations and lawyers, the American skaters and ice dancers had tried to force the International Olympic Committee to award them the silver medals they thought they deserved. But their plea to the Court of Arbitration for Sport was rejected.

Now those American athletes – singles skaters Nathan Chen, Karen Chen and Vincent Zhou; the duo of Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier; and the ice dance teams of Madison Chock and Evan Bates and Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue – will receive their medals.

Valieva's Beijing Olympics were a story of sublime skill and sudden greatness, until her world came crashing down within days.

At 15, she had arrived in Beijing as a heavy favorite to win the gold medal in the women's singles, and again in the team event, having zoomed to the top of the sport and dominated it in just a few months in a way rarely seen before. .

In pre-Olympic competitions, Valieva seemed unstoppable, breaking world record after world record for points, partly due to her sensational ability to perform extremely difficult quadruple jumps as if they were basic elements of the sport.

But it was Valieva's grace that took her to another level: she floated across the ice and moved as gently as a prima ballerina to the music, with every inch of her body feeling the music. Sometimes she seemed to make no sound at all, even when she made great leaps, because she was so good at disguising her immense strength with her near-flawless skills.

She led Russia to gold in the team event in the opening days of the Games, became the first woman to land two quads in an Olympic free skate, and then was poised to add the gold in the singles when the doping positive was made public.

From that moment on, and with the world watching her every move, Valieva began to crumble. During her final performance, the women's free skate, she tripped and fell, barely crossing the finish line. As she left the rink in tears, her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, was caught on live television looking sternly at her and reprimanding her by saying in Russian, “Why did you let it go?” Why did you stop fighting? Explain that to me, why?”

Valieva, the fallen favorite, had dropped to fourth place in the general classification. But Russia and Tutberidze still triumphed: the two other skaters finished first and second, claiming gold and silver.