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Hearings in the case of a positive doping test for Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva are resumed in the Court of Arbitration for Sport ( CAS) on Thursday.
They should last two days, then the arbitrators will have to discuss and make a verdict — unless, of course, as already happened at the end of September, they again need additional time to study the circumstances of what happened.
On the eve of the start of the hearings, CAS announced that they would last three or four days. Initially they were planned to be held on September 26-28, and September 29 was announced as a reserve date. However, on the third day of meetings in Lausanne, the panel of arbitrators announced that it required additional documents. Their preparations began immediately. To allow the parties time to consider and respond, CAS has scheduled two additional hearing days on November 9 and 10.
Nothing is officially known about the nature of the new documents. The four parties involved in the trial declined to make any substantive comments after the completion of the first part of the hearing. The release was issued only by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), emphasizing that it continues to insist on a maximum four-year period of disqualification for Valieva. The International Skating Union (ISU), the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) and the skater herself have not made any statements.
However, in the interval between the first and second parts of the hearings, a number of public statements that could turn out to be extremely important in the trial of Valieva’s case were made by the figure skater’s coach Eteri Tutberidze. She gave an interview to football specialist Leonid Slutsky in the YouTube show “Comment. Coach” and commented as follows on the student’s behavior during the ill-fated Russian championship in St. Petersburg, where a sample taken from her on December 25, 2021 showed the content of a microscopic dose of the prohibited substance trimetazidine: < br>
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“Even when she was interrogated, I told her: Kamila, quickly tell me what you had on the day of the short program. She told me: some volunteer treated her to ice cream, some masseuse Chekmareva treated her to tea, someone else something else — then there's more. I say — seriously? And you ate ice cream there, drank tea? And all this happened? She: “Well, I don’t know, I’m somehow there.” We teach and teach, but like this. I think «, she probably has no more faith in anyone. This is where she changed.»
Here we recall the essence of the process in CAS. After investigating the circumstances of the positive test, the independent Disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee (DAC) of RUSADA determined that there was no fault or negligence in Valieva’s actions and decided to deprive her of the gold medal of the Russian Championship, at which the skater passed a positive doping test, but not to assign any period of disqualification. Three organizations — WADA, ISU and RUSADA — filed an appeal to CAS against this verdict. They were combined into one pending case.
WADA, as stated above, demands Valieva’s guilty plea and a four-year disqualification. The International Skating Union, when filing an appeal, demanded that the skater be punished at the discretion of CAS, but later changed its position. In a release issued before the hearing, the ISU insisted that Valieva be suspended for four or two years. Finally, RUSADA, filing a statement of claim, demanded that the athlete’s actions be determined to have minor guilt or negligence and that she be punished in the form of a warning.
It is unknown whether Valieva declared to CAS that she took food and drinks from the wrong hands during the Russian Championship, where she passed a positive test, as Tutberidze voiced it. The court's release published only counterclaims from the skater's side. Initially, Valieva's lawyers planned to challenge the jurisdiction of CAS regarding the doping violation, which they consider «not proven.» Then, if CAS rejected this request, Valieva's side was going to insist that there was no fault or negligence in her actions, or, due to the unintentionality of the violation, was ready to accept a period of ineligibility for up to two years, but with the skater's results remaining valid.
The last point, as you know, is of utmost importance due to the fact that the figure skater’s positive doping test became known only a month and a half after her test — namely, the day after the end of the team tournament of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, where the Russian team with Valieva in the lineup, she won, ahead of rivals from the USA and Japan. The International Olympic Committee declared the results of these competitions preliminary, and postponed the award ceremony for the winners until the final verdict in the case of the Russian figure skater was made.
Nevertheless, there is an opinion according to which the results of the Olympic team tournament should remain unchanged regardless of the outcome of the Valieva case. In particular, he was voiced in the same interview with Slutsky Tutberidze.
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«There should be no consideration of the team medal at all. Whose mistake is it that this athlete participated in the team? Ours? No. Was the athlete clean at the Olympics? Yes. How did she end up (at the Olympics)? Questions I don’t even know to whom: to WADA , to the laboratory. Then let them print a new medal, do what they want. It’s their fault. It’s not the team’s fault at all… Tell them about the results that she had doping at the Russian Championships on the second, third, fourth, fifth (February ), Anya (Shcherbakova) and Sasha (Trusova) would have skated, and the team’s result would have been exactly the same. They would have won too,” said the honored coach of Russia.
It is quite possible that the issue of the final distribution of Olympic team tournament medals will also be subject to consideration by CAS. After all, the ISU regulations do not clearly state what to do if one of the participants in the Olympic team tournament is disqualified after the fact. But first, the CAS panel, consisting of the American Jeffrey Mishkin, the Frenchman Mathieu Maisonneuve and the representative of the UK and Australia James Drake, who chairs the troika, will complete the collection of evidence in the remaining two days of hearings in Valieva’s separate case and allow the parties to make final statements.
If a second “overtime” is not required during the additional two days of hearings, the arbitrators will take the necessary time to prepare a verdict. CAS has already stated that it will not be announced immediately. The court did not indicate the waiting time for a decision, but we can say for sure that Valieva, regardless of the results of the hearing, will have the opportunity to compete at the Russian Grand Prix in Kazan, which will begin the next day — November 11.