© AP
DEP-OLI BEIJING-WOMEN’S SKATING
Tired following a grueling doping hearing, Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva said she was happy following being allowed to compete in the women’s short program at the Winter Olympics on Tuesday. Beijing.
Valieva, 15, is the big favorite to win the gold along with her compatriots Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova, who aspire to achieve the first podium for the same country in Olympic women’s figure skating.
Valieva was cleared to compete despite her positive doping test on December 25, the result of which was not made public until last week, following her two brilliant performances in the team event helped Russia to gold. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled in her favor on Monday, in part because she is a minor, known as a “protected person,” and subject to different rules than adult athletes. .
His attorneys “raised some doubt regarding his guilt,” Denis Oswald, a veteran member of the International Olympic Committeewith its possible explanation of accidental, and not deliberate, doping with the heart drug trimetazidine.
“His argument was that this contamination happened with a product that his grandfather was taking,” Oswald, a Swiss lawyer who had previously prosecuted several Russian doping cases, told reporters.
Valieva, who trained in the two sessions assigned to her on Monday, told Russian state television Channel One in comments broadcast overnight: “These days have been very difficult for me. I’m happy but emotionally tired.”
If the Russian finishes in the top three there will be no medal ceremony because the IOC is concerned she might be sanctioned following a full investigation into the case. The three-member CAS tribunal decided only whether she might compete in the Games and did not assess the case in its entirety.
The CAS said that the skater testified during the long hearing, which ended around 03:00 on Monday. Valieva confirmed that she followed the entire session by videoconference from the Olympic Village.
“I sat for seven hours, we had a 20-minute break, and I sat and watched. It was very difficult, but this is apparently one of the moments, of the phases, that I have to go through,” Valieva said, adding that the process taught her that adult life “can be unfair.”
Valieva is scheduled to compete in the final group, the 26th of 30 skaters participating in the individual event on Tuesday in Beijing. Trusova and Shcherbakova, who like Valieva are coached by the controversial Eteri Tutberidze, will hit the ice shortly following her and before Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, who closes the short program.
The Capital Pavilion will host on Thursday the free program that will decide the medals.
Valieva and her teammates will seek to extend an era of Russian dominance in women’s Olympic figure skating. It started in 2014, at the Sochi Games, where the state-sponsored doping plot first came to light and Adelina Sotnikova won gold for the host country. Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva took over with a double, this time under the name of Russian Olympians, at Pyeongchang 2018.
