Russian figure skating singles, 16-year-old Camilla Balieva, caught in a doping controversy, used her grandfather's drugs as an excuse, and experts dismissed his claim as unlikely.



Travis Tigert, president of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), said in an interview with CNN on the 17th that "Balieva appears to have been intentionally taking performance-enhancing substances."



Balieva led the Russian Olympic Committee to the victory in the figure skating team event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.



However, the award ceremony was virtually canceled after a urine sample collected in December last year detected trimetazidine, a drug used to treat angina and stimulant.



Here, the New York Times (NYT) reported that in addition to the banned substances trimetazidine, Hypoxen and L-carnitine were also detected in Balieva urine samples.



Balieva pleaded at her Court of Arbitration (CAS) hearing that she blamed her grandfather's heart medication.



After sharing a glass of water with her grandfather, her grandfather discovered that her grandfather had a substance in her heart remedy in Balieva's urine sample.



However, Tigert insisted that "the use of one banned and two non-banned drugs appears to be intended to increase endurance and reduce fatigue."



She continued, adding that in the case of hypoxen, because of its role in increasing oxygen saturation, USADA saw it as a performance-enhancing substance and pushed for designation as a banned substance in 2017.



Tigert also refuted Balieva's allegation that the urine sample was contaminated with the drug his grandfather was taking, as absurd.



“The concentration of trimetazidine detected in Balieva’s urine sample was analyzed to be 2.1 ng (nanogram) per mL,” said Tigert. A lot,” he pointed out.



This is a figure that can only be achieved by taking trimetazidine in daily doses, and Balieva's claim that it is because she shared a glass of water with her grandfather emphasized that the possibility is slim.



“Obviously someone taught or guided and led her to take these drugs,” Tigert said. “It could be someone who provided financial support to them. I did this to upload it."



(Photo = Yonhap News)