"I'm really happy to be on the ice. I'm happy the Channel One Cup happened," Valieva told reporters on Sunday after her team's second-place finish in Saransk.

"The spectators give you energy when you are tired. You keep moving forward thanks to them," she added, just over a month after the end of the Games which had taken place without foreign spectators. due to sanitary measures.

Valieva had not appeared in competition since her catastrophic performance in the free program of the Olympic Games-2022 in February which had made her demote from first place (after the short program) to 4th place in the final.

The 15-year-old Russian teenager was one of the outstanding figures of the last Winter Games, after the announcement in the middle of the 2022 Olympics of his positive doping control at the end of December, the authorization received at the last minute from the Arbitral Tribunal of Sport (TAS) to participate in the women's event, her rout in the free program and her heartbreaking sobs not comforted by her coach Eteri Tutberidze.

The Channel One Cup tournament has been rescheduled by the Russian Skating Federation to coincide with the dates of the 2022 World Figure Skating Championships which took place from Wednesday to Saturday in Montpellier, without the Russians or Belarusians excluded from all competitions competitions by the International Skating Federation (ISU) after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Valieva had 173.88 points in the free program on Sunday, behind her training partner Anna Shcherbakova, an Olympic champion in Beijing in February, who had the best run with 176.12 points.

Kamila Valieva falls on the Olympic ice rink during the Beijing Games, February 17, 2022 Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV AFP / Archives

Valieva won the short program on Saturday with 83.63 points, but it was the Red Machine team, led by Shcherbakova, who won the Channel One Cup competition with 145 points against Valieva's 141.

Valieva had started her 2022 Olympics by participating in Russia's victory in the team event and on this occasion becoming the first skater to land quadruple jumps at the Olympics.

At the end of December, on the sidelines of the Russian Championships, she had tested positive for trimetazidine, a molecule used to relieve angina pectoris and banned by the World Doping Agency since 2014, because it would promote blood circulation.

Because she is under 16, Valieva risks between a simple reprimand and two years of suspension.

The process could take several months.

© 2022 AFP