By Karolos Grohmann
BEIJING (Reuters) – Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s Winter Olympics will be decided not on the ice rink but by three women and three men at a boardroom table in a five-star Beijing hotel a short drive from the stadium where she thrilled the world this week.
The 15-year-old prodigy became the first woman to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics on Monday, winning a team figure skating gold with the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).
But the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Friday she had tested positive for a banned angina drug, rocking the Games and renewing focus on past Russian doping violations.
With Valieva due to compete again on Tuesday in the single event, the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) six-member panel is under pressure to hold its closed-door hearings – on the second floor of the Continental Grand Hotel – and rule before then.
If sent home, Valieva would be one of the youngest athletes ever removed from the Olympics for doping.
Her urine sample, showing presence of Trimetazidine, was collected on Dec. 25 last year. But the results were only reported to official bodies on Tuesday, the day after her dazzling performance in the Capital Indoor stadium to the stirring sound of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”.
An automatic provisional suspension, imposed after any positive test, was lifted by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday. But the International Olympic Committee, WADA and the International Skating Union plan to appeal to CAS to reinstate it.
‘IN MEMORIAM’?
CAS has set up two temporary offices in Beijing – one for legal disputes and one for doping issues – to provide rapid resolution services during the Games.
The chairman of the CAS anti-doping division is Swiss former federal judge Ivo Eusebio, a longtime former member of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s disciplinary commission.
His co-president in the proceedings will be American David Rivkin, a partner at law firm Debevoise & Plimpton.
They will be joined by two Australians: lawyer John Boultbee, a former CEO of the Australian Institute of Sport, and judge Tricia Kavanagh, a member of the same CAS division at the 2016 Olympics.
Swiss lawyer Raphaelle Favre Schnyder and Austrian judge Martina Spreitzer-Kropiunik complete the lineup.
It is not the first time CAS has a big part to play at the Olympics, with doping a dark part of sport for decades now.
Russian athletes are competing as ROC athletes – without a national flag and without their anthem at medal ceremonies – for the third Games in a row as a result of sanctions over a state-backed doping system.
Their young star, Valieva, will now nervously await the CAS ruling, hoping more music used en route to gold – Kirill Richter’s “In Memoriam” – does not prove prophetic of her Olympic dreams in China.
(Writing by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
