Russian star skater tests positive for banned drug at Winter Olympics

The star of Russia’s ladies’s figure-skating group has examined constructive for a performance-enhancing drug on the Beijing Winter Olympics, officers stated on Friday, upending one of many main competitions on the Video games and implicating Moscow in one other high-profile dishonest scandal.

Kamila Valieva, 15, who this week grew to become the primary lady to land a quadruple bounce in Olympic competitors, examined constructive for trimetazidine in a pattern collected on December 25, in accordance with the Worldwide Testing Company, anti-doping watchdog. Trimetazidine is a drug that improves blood move and is used to deal with coronary heart situations.

The take a look at was processed by the Russian Anti-Doping Company (Rusada) on Tuesday, a day after Valieva led her compatriots to victory within the group determine skating occasion, forward of the US and Japan. However the medal ceremony was suspended following experiences {that a} Russian athlete had failed a medication take a look at.

Valieva has appealed in opposition to the discovering and took part in coaching on Friday after Rusada allowed her to follow and compete. The ITA, on behalf of the Worldwide Olympic Committee, stated it might enchantment in opposition to the Russian resolution to the Court docket of Arbitration for Sport, which handles worldwide authorized issues for athletic occasions.

The constructive take a look at end result and Valieva’s deferred suspension constituted essentially the most vital sporting scandal on the Beijing Video games.

The IOC imposed sanctions in opposition to Russia over its state-run doping programme on the 2014 Sochi Winter Video games, banning the nation in 2017 from worldwide sports activities competitions.

However athletes declared to be “clear” have been allowed to compete underneath the Russian Olympic Committee moniker, swapping nationwide symbols such because the Russian flag and anthem for Olympic insignia and a passage from a Tchaikovsky concerto.

Valieva’s failed take a look at has renewed questions in regards to the efficacy of the sanctions programme. Mark Adams, IOC spokesperson, stated the organisation took “powerful however acceptable motion” in opposition to Russia when requested if the measures had been ample.

Adams added that the IOC was working to discover a decision to all appeals within the case “for all these involved, not solely the Russian athlete”.

The Russian Olympic Committee and sports activities officers for the US and Japan didn’t reply to a request for remark.

The Winter Olympics have been the point of interest of wider geopolitical tensions. The US has led a diplomatic boycott of the Video games over Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the place it has interned greater than 1mn Muslim Uyghurs.

China’s president Xi Jinping has additionally used the event to sign his strengthening ties with Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, as Moscow is engaged in a diplomatic stand-off with the west over Ukraine. The leaders held a summit forward of the opening ceremony final week, at which China joined Russia’s opposition to Nato enlargement.

Valieva had been anticipated to win the gold medal within the ladies’s particular person occasion, which begins on Tuesday. Victory would make the athlete, who’s competing in her first season as an elite determine skater, the third consecutive Russian teenager to be Olympic champion.

She is a part of a famend however controversial group coached by Eteri Tutberidze, who has skilled lots of the sport’s champions over the previous decade, together with the 2018 gold and silver medallists in ladies’s determine skating.

Trimetazidine is included within the World Anti-Doping Company’s prohibited substances listing as a “hormone and metabolic modulator” alongside meldonium, an identical drug that was utilized by Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, who was banned from competitors for 2 years in 2016.

Extra reporting by Thomas Hale in Beijing and William Langley in Hong Kong