The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has rejected Canada's appeal to strip Russia of its 2022 Olympic bronze medals in the team figure skating event. Sport explains why the Russians were allowed to keep their awards.
CAS took a neutral pathIn general, the CAS judges should apologize. Canadian Megan Duhamel — a screaming cry from Canada, looking for a Russian trace wherever possible — was probably already heading to Paris to receive bronze medals for the entire team, and then this bummer. No shame, no conscience, referees! This could lead to accusations of ties to the Kremlin!
Now let's get serious. Perhaps, CAS made one of the most politically neutral decisions regarding our athletes since the beginning of the CAS. The wording from the final press release explaining the refusal to satisfy the Canadian appeal is pleasantly surprising — «it was not possible to find a reason for recalculating points in Canada's favor in the ISU rules.» Of course, it is not there — on the other hand, just as there are no clear reasons to leave us bronze. In essence, the ISU decided that with the disqualification of Kamila Valieva, the maximum possible ten points in the short and free programs are no longer available — now, since Kamila took both 10s, the maximum is nine points. In that case, Canada really does remain literally a point behind us.
The Canadians, of course, demanded that the ISU deduct not the maximum, but the minimum scores. That is, that the 10s should be given to the girls who took places after Kamila, who in that case was proposed to be crossed out of the protocol altogether. In that case, everyone who was in the tournament table after her would move up one place, thus gaining two extra points (one for the short and free program).
Legally, both decisions could have been made — in the sense that the rules do not prevent either. But the ISU decided to take the most «neutral» path and give us at least some kind of award, and CAS did not interfere with this. Duhamel is already raising the whole X (former Twitter) to war, but who cares? Even a theoretical appeal by the Canadians to the Supreme Court of Switzerland is not really capable of changing anything.
Everyone knows who won the Beijing OlympicsSo is it time to celebrate? Yes and no, because questions still remain for the international community. As ISU legal consultant Michael Gistlinger said, stripping Russia of all its medals based on Kamila's disqualification would have the effect of saying that the Russians didn't compete in the team event at all, which is not true. With these words, he justified the decision to award us bronze, while criticizing the Canadians for questioning the correctness of the union's position.
On the other hand, couldn't we have gone the team route in that case? When one athlete is disqualified, which is painful in itself, but the others, who no one has any complaints about, are not affected? Well, pretending that they didn't compete is unfair and all that. Isn't it? In team disciplines, the disqualification of one player, even a very important one, does not in itself cast doubt on the results of the entire team, because in this case everything depends on more than one person. And even taking into account that Kamila performed brilliantly, the rest of the team was no worse. Replace her with Anna Shcherbakova or Alexandra Trusova — and the final result would hardly have been different. That year our team was an absolute power, but for some reason this fact was omitted during the proceedings.
However, all this reasoning no longer makes any sense. In our difficult times, even the fact that we are being bitten little by little is already a kind of small victory. Our boys and girls will have medals, and as for their color — does it matter? We already know who won those Olympic Games. And this fact cannot be changed by either Duhamel's shouts or CAS decisions.