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Kamila Valiyeva at the 2022 Olympics

Photo: Andrew Milligan / dpa

The Russian figure skater Kamila Valiyeva fought unsuccessfully against her four-year ban - the 17-year-old's defense relied on a more complex story than previously assumed. According to Valiyeva's website, a contaminated strawberry-banana dessert caused the positive doping test in the run-up to the 2022 Olympic Games.

This emerges from the reasons for the judgment of the International Sports Court Cas. Her “grandfather,” who is not biologically related to the athlete, prepared this dessert for Valiyeva on December 21, 2021. He cut strawberries and bananas on the same board on which he usually chops up his heart tablets. She then ate the dessert on the train to Saint Petersburg, where the Russian championships and the sampling took place four days later.

In this detour, the banned drug trimetazidine got into her body. So far, the publicly known line of defense has been that Valiyeva drank from a glass from which her heart-sick grandfather had previously taken his medication.

In any case, the Cas also found the new version unconvincing. At the end of January, almost two years after the doping scandal at the Winter Games in Beijing, the Russian woman was banned for four years. The start of the lockdown was dated December 25, 2021.

The case went around the world

This means that Russia's team is also likely to lose the team gold it won with the then 15-year-old at the Winter Games in Beijing. The US selection would then be declared Olympic champions. The World Anti-Doping Agency Wada welcomed the verdict and said: "Child doping is unforgivable."

Valiyeva's case shocked the world in 2022. After the team gold, the doping case became public. Waliyeva was initially banned, but was then allowed to compete in the individual. Under public pressure, the then 15-year-old fell several times, burst into tears and was even scolded for it by her controversial coach Eteri Tutberidze. The images of the crying teenager and the cold-hearted trainer went around the world. She failed to win a medal.

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