The women’s figure skating competition became a show at the Beijing Olympics that would have been avoided by operating according to normal anti-doping practices.
15 years old Kamila Valijevan the doping cart was undoubtedly one of the most memorable sagas of the Beijing Olympics.
The figure skating superstar first led the Russian Olympic athletes to number one in the team competition and was the first woman to make two quadruple jumps at the Olympic time.
A prize-giving ceremony was never held. The International Olympic Committee canceled the event because information about Valijeva’s positive doping test had come to light. The team competition ended on February 7, the prizes were to be distributed two days later.
Valijeva caught a substance called trimetazidine, which has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Wada Prohibited List since 2014.
The International Court of Appeal for Sport, Cas, granted Valijeva a competition license despite doping. Valijeva was thus allowed to compete in the Olympic women’s solo skating, where she finished fourth.
A 41-page report on the decision on the Valijeva doping case made during the Olympics and the reasons for it has now been published on Cas’s website.
Why did Cas end up granting Valijeva competition law? One crucial factor was his position as a protected athlete. Under the Wada Anti-Doping Code, the penalty scale for trimetazidine for those under 16 is a minimum warning and a maximum of two years of non-compete, while those 16 and older are generally sanctioned for four years.
However, there is a loophole in the rules that is favorable to Russian teenagers.
Although the IOC, Wada, and ISU were dissatisfied with the explanation of Valijeva and her defense, which provided only assumptions about trimetazidine entering Valijeva’s body, the burden of proof in Wada’s rules for those under 16 is also milder than in adults.
Indeed, Cas notes that although Wada has created the status of a protected person under the age of 16, there is a loophole in the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency regarding the pre-trial suspension.
According to the Cas panel, proving the degree of guilt of a minor athlete is extremely challenging, making the final verdict likely to be at the lower end of the scale. In the case of Valijeva, this could mean a warning or a ban on competition for a few months. As doping cases usually take several months to process, it would not be legally acceptable for a temporary ban on competition to last longer than a final verdict.
The story continues after the fact box.
However, the main focus of the decision was that the athlete was not to blame for the lengthy processing of his sample and the publication of its result during the Olympics. As a result, Valijeva did not have the opportunity to defend himself properly, such as requesting his B sample to be analyzed and to supervise the analysis of the sample himself.
The international sports community was pleased with this information as the Games continued. Valijeva won the short program but failed miserably in her free program, causing her to drop fourth in the medals.
The amount of the substance is disclosed
Three weeks later, a 41-page report on the decision on the Valijeva doping case and the reasons for it was published on the Cas website.
The report contains a detailed explanation of all the parties to the case. A new feature is the amount of trimetazidine found in Valijeva’s doping sample, among other things. It was 2.1 nanograms per milliliter.
Valijeva was represented at the reading by her mother, who suggested that trimetazidine could have been inadvertently ingested by Valijeva. According to her mother, Valijeva used the same containers as a drinking glass with her grandfather, who eats trimetazidine in the aftercare of heart surgery. A video with Grandpa driving Valijeva to rehearsals was also shown during the reading. The trimetazidine MV medicine pack was visible in the car.
In his own complaint, however, the World Anti-Doping Agency Wada pointed out that the defense did not have a prescription for a doctor prescribing trimetazidine to Valijeva’s grandfather.
Valijeva’s defense used the work of a group of Polish researchers as an example in terms of concentration. It fed a standard dose of 35 milligrams to athletes, resulting in a concentration of 966 to 9,000 nanograms per milliliter in athletes the following day.
Suek’s medical expert in Finland’s anti-doping activities Pekka Rauhalan Valijeva considers that 2.1 nanograms per milliliter is very low, which does not, however, rule out the possibility of long-term use of trimetazidine.
– The amount of the substance is very small. It’s pretty close to being able to even measure it. It is possible that this is a remnant of previous use, a previous normal dose use. In other words, over time, the concentrations have fallen, Rauhala says.
Before 23-25. Valijeva tested the Russian Championships on December 30, after the Games on January 13, and at the Beijing Olympics on February 7. These samples were clean.
According to Rauhala, the low concentration also leaves open the possibility that the substance has entered Valijeva’s body through contamination.
– If the concentrations had been more than 1000 times higher, there could be no question of contamination. Now the result left this window open, Rauhala says.
Rauhala does not warm up to the public explanation of water glass.
– Drinking the same glass alone is not enough, there should be a reasonable amount of saliva.
Towels for the laboratory
The Stockholm Anti-Doping Laboratory received criticism from Cas for slower than usual operation. Therefore, information about Valijeva’s positive sample was only obtained 44 days after testing, in the middle of the Beijing Olympics. In the meantime, Valijeva had time to give samples on January 13 and February 7 and get negative results from both.
Wada’s official Code of Conduct states that an Athlete should receive his or her test results within 20 days of Sample collection and that this limit may only be exceeded in exceptional circumstances. In Cas’s decision, Wada’s representatives argued that the 20-day limit is only a recommendation for laboratories and that Valijeva’s expectation was in line with frequent processing times.
Cas’s panel did not find Wada’s arguments convincing. The panel ended up ripping Wada that it requires athletes to be in a state of high readiness, but is lax in its own code. Although the samples are handled anonymously, Cas’s panel rebuked Wada for slowing down on the eve of the Olympics and when it came to the qualifying competition for testing, the Russian Figure Skating Championships.
Cas also did not find credible the explanation provided by the Stockholm Laboratory that the delay in analyzing the sample was due to a staff shortage caused by the coronavirus.
Cas’s panel noted that due to the slowdown in the laboratory, Valijeva did not have the opportunity to form a proper defense against his temporary ban on competition.
If Valijeva had received the result of her doping test within 20 days, the case would have been dealt with before the Beijing Olympics. According to Wada’s rules, after the completion of the A-Sample, the Athlete will have seven days to receive a written explanation of what the A-Sample has contained for his or her defense. The Athlete must indicate within 15 days whether he or she accepts the result of Sample A or whether he or she will challenge the Anti-Doping Authorities to examine another version of the same Sample, the so-called Sample B.
The aforementioned weaknesses in handling Valijeva’s case were key when Cas granted the skater competition in Beijing. The Court of Appeal further underlined that it did not even have to take into account the testimony of Valijeva and his backing forces.
They will be dealt with in the lengthy Cas case, which is not yet clear.