The Russian figure skating star at the center of doping questions at the Beijing Olympics will be allowed to compete in the women’s singles event after a ruling by arbitrators on Monday.
The skater, Kamila Valieva, 15, has become a face of the Games and is widely seen as the favorite to win the women’s event that begins on Tuesday. The ruling on Monday means she can take to the ice when the short program begins, though questions will surely hang over her performance and the Russian team.
The panel on Monday decided it was within the discretion of Russia’s antidoping agency to lift a brief suspension of her that it had imposed last week after learning she had tested positive weeks ago for a banned drug. That revelation came a day after she had helped lead Russia to a gold medal in the team event.
In the ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the body charged with resolving disputes in global sports, the arbitrators rejected appeals by the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency and skating’s global governing body to reinstate a provisional suspension that would have ruled Valieva out of the Olympics.
The court did not consider whether Valieva was at fault for testing positive test for trimetazidine, a heart medication that could increase endurance. Her positive result came from a urine sample that was taken from her at the Russian national championships on Dec. 25 but was not confirmed for about six weeks. The panel that met on Saturday and Sunday in Beijing upheld the Russian antidoping agency’s decision to suspend Valieva for only one day last week before quickly reinstating her.
The Russian antidoping agency said it had received notice from a Stockholm lab of Valieva’s failed drug test only on Feb. 7, the same day that she led the Russians to a gold medal in the team event. The medals for that competition have yet to be awarded.
The International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union had filed an appeal with the court last week, seeking to reinstate the suspension, which would most likely prevent Valieva from competing in Beijing.
“This is a very complicated and controversial situation,” her 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.”
Despite those unknowns, Tutberidze quickly added, “I wanted to say that we are absolutely confident that Kamila is innocent and clean.”
The legal battle over Valieva’s future eligibility is likely to last for weeks, at least. The fate of the Olympic gold medal in the team event also hangs in the balance.
Last week, Valieva set a world record for points in the short program. In the free skate, she became the first woman to land a quadruple jump. Her performance led the Russians to win the team event, their best showing ever. The United States won the silver medal, and Japan won bronze.
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