The Court of Arbitration for Sport begins a hearing Tuesday into the doping scandal of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. U.S. skaters still haven’t received team medals from the 2022 Winter Games.
An international sports tribunal known as the Court of Arbitration for Sport begins a hearing today in Lausanne, Switzerland, that’s expected to finally settle a doping scandal that shook the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The crisis in the figure skating world actually began a few weeks before the Beijing Games opened. Kamila Valieva — then a 15-year-old superstar — competed at a national event in St. Petersburg, Russia, in December 2021.
She skated masterfully, but a sample taken during the competition later tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing heart medication. Many experts and international sports officials believe that should have disqualified Valieva from the Olympics.
But the result was only revealed after she competed in Beijing, helping Russia win a team gold medal. Then — right before the award ceremony — chaos erupted.
«We were dressed in our ceremony gear, in a room waiting to to take a bus to the venue and we were told, this is canceled,» recalled Zach Donohue, a member of the U.S. figure skating team, in an interview with NPR earlier this year.
It appeared Valieva’s test result would turn a U.
