BEIJING (Reuters) – The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Friday accused the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) of ignoring the world anti-doping code when it upheld the Russian anti-doping authorities’ choice to carry the provisional suspension of Russian teenage determine skater Kamila Valieva on the Beijing Olympics.
CAS dominated on Monday that Valieva must be allowed to compete in the ladies’s competitors regardless of having failed a drug check at her nationwide championships final December.
The end result was solely revealed on Feb. 8, a day after Valieva helped the Russian Olympic Committee win the group occasion on the Beijing Games.
In its reasoned choice printed on Friday, CAS mentioned it went with the Disciplinary Committee (DADC) of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s argument that the 15-year-old Valieva, being a ‘protected particular person’, didn’t want to fulfill the standard requirements to show that she didn’t take the banned coronary heart drug she examined constructive for willingly.
“The Committee (DADC) thought-about that the Athlete established, at the very least on the ‘affordable chance’ stage and on the most on the ‘stability of chance’ stage, that the violation resulted from the ingestion of a contaminated product,” CAS mentioned.
Valieva’s defence had argued that the constructive check resulted from a mix-up along with her grandfather’s coronary heart drug, trimetazidine.
“In the DADC’s opinion, in truth, the Athlete might have consumed a product which has been contaminated by the medicine used in her interior circle,” CAS continued.
That rationalization didn’t fulfill, WADA, who mentioned {that a} ‘protected particular person’ (i.e. an Under-16 athlete) shouldn’t be handled in another way so far as provisional suspensions are involved.
“In impact, by making this award, the CAS Panel has re-written the Code to say that necessary provisional suspensions for ‘protected persons’ shall now be thought-about as non-obligatory provisional suspensions,” WADA mentioned in a press release.
“This is just not what the Code says, not what the Code drafters supposed and was by no means proposed by any of WADA’s stakeholders in the course of the three rounds of Code session.
“This re-writing of the Code, which might apparently permit ‘protected persons’ to proceed competing after testing constructive for non-specified substances with none clarification of the circumstances, dangers undermining the integrity of sporting competitors and the boldness of athletes that they’re competing on a stage enjoying subject.”
Valieva topped the ladies’s competitors standings after the brief programme on Tuesday however crumbled below strain in Thursday’s free skate and slipped all the way down to fourth.
Her 17-year-old compatriot Anna Shcherbakova received the occasion.
(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
