Banned Russian skater blames positive drugs test on strawberry dessert

07 February 2024 , 20:08

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Kamila Valieva has been hit with a four-year ban (Image: Nikolay Muratkin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Kamila Valieva has claimed a strawberry dessert was to blame for the positive doping test that led to her four-year ban from figure skating.

The Russian claimed that the food was inadvertently contaminated by her grandfather’s heart medication but the the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has published its full report against her. Valieva tested positive for the banned substance Trimetazidine when she was 15 and competing in the Russian national championships in December 2021.

Valieva put forward three possible explanations for the positive test, all of which revolved around a strawberry dessert she claimed her grandfather, Gennaidy Solovyov, gave her before she headed to St Petersburg.

In submitted evidence, Valieva referenced her grandfather’s heart medication and said: “Probably, this pill got into a dessert, which he usually gives to me. Or, I saw a few times accidentally, that he crushed the pills with the knife and dissolves them in a glass, and took them.

"So I might have drunk from the same glass or there, at home, I might have eaten something from the same chopping board and so on.”

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However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), one of three bodies to pursue the CAS verdict along with International Skating Union (ISU) and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), have dismissed her explanation.

WADA claim, according to the CAS judgement, that is was “inherently implausible” that an elite level athlete would take a homemade strawberry dessert with her across Russia and eat it whilst she was competing.

The figure skater is adamant her positive test was due to a dessert (Photo by Liu Lu/VCG via Getty Images)

WADA also called into question the lack of medical evidence relating to Solovyov’s heart condition, stating it was “nearly impossible” for him to have had such a condition “without there being any contemporaneous evidence of it”. The CAS panel broadly concurred with WADA’s submission in their own verdict.

They concluded that they were “not persuaded” by the explanation because “there are too many shortcomings in the evidence, and too many unanswered questions, for the panel to decide that her account is more likely than not”.

As a result, it has been decided that the consequence should be a four-year ban, backdated to the time of the failed test, meaning Valieva will be out of the sport until Christmas Day 2025. She has also forfeited all medals won during her backdated period of disqualification, including the team gold won by Russia in at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

Samuel Meade