The legal battle over Kamila Valieva’s eligibility to compete at the Olympics will continue on Sunday with a closed-door hearing before a panel from the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The status of Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skater at the center of a doping scandal threatening to overshadow the Games, has been in doubt after it was revealed on Friday that she had tested positive for a banned drug in December.
The court, in a statement, said it expected to render a decision by Monday afternoon, a day before the women’s short program begins.
The panel of arbitrators will consider an appeal filed by several groups, including the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee and the International Skating Union, which have challenged a decision by Russia’s antidoping agency to lift a provisional suspension of Valieva last week.
The finding that she had tested positive — had it not been delayed more than six weeks — would have made her ineligible to compete in Beijing. The Russian antidoping agency said it had received her positive test result on Monday, the same day Valieva led the Russian team to a gold medal in the team event.
It provisionally suspended her on Tuesday, shortly before the medals were to be awarded in the team event, after informing her of the positive test. But it lifted the penalty a day later.
“This is a very complicated and controversial situation,” Valieva’s coach, Eteri Tutberidze, told Russia’s state-run TV network Channel One on Saturday, in her first public comments about the case. “There are many questions and very few answers.”
Tutberidze told Channel One that she was not sure how Valieva had been cleared to compete at the Olympics in the first place. It took a Stockholm lab more than six weeks to report that a urine sample Valieva submitted on Dec. 25 had been found to contain traces of a banned drug, trimetazidine, that is thought to increase endurance.
Despite those unknowns, Tutberidze quickly added, “I wanted to say that we are absolutely confident that Kamila is innocent and clean.”
Russian officials have been quick to defend Valieva, who is the heavy favorite to win the gold medal in the women’s singles event.
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