Thirty-seven days after her dramatic fall from grace at the Winter Olympics, Kamila Valieva will return to competition in Russia this weekend with no apparent conclusion to the doping case that blighted the Beijing Games in sight.
The 15-year-old Russian figure skater is set to compete in the Channel One Cup, a Russian-only event in Saransk contrived to clash with the World Championships, which start on Wednesday in Montpellier, and from which all Russian skaters are banned due to sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine.
Reports in Russia this week have intimated that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) intends to use all of its allotted six-month time-frame from the date of the notification of Valieva’s alleged offence to reach a decision over a prospective sanction – meaning the ruling will be delayed until August at the earliest.
An asterisk remains attached to the result of the Olympic team competition, which was won by a Russian team including Valieva, and for which the medals are yet to be awarded, despite a failed appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) by the current silver medallists, the US …
- March 23, 2022
