The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced on February 21 that it plans to appeal to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport against Russian anti-doping officials' exoneration last month of a teen Russian Olympic gold medalist ice skater for a positive doping test.
It emerged during the Tokyo Olympics that the then-15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva had tested positive before the games for trimetazidine, a banned substance that boosts endurance.
WADA said it disagreed with the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) disciplinary commission's decision last month not to punish Valieva over the sample, which was taken at the 2021 Russian National Figure Skating Championships.
The Russian body said Valieva bore "no fault or negligence" in the matter.
WADA called that decision "wrong under the terms of the World Anti-Doping Code in this case."
"Within the appeal, WADA is seeking a four-year period of ineligibility and disqualification of all the athlete’s results from the date of the sample collection on 25 December 2021," the international anti-doping authority said on its website. "As it has sought to do throughout this process, WADA will continue to push for this matter to proceed without further undue delay."
The back-dating would necessarily deny Valieva qualification -- and thus any medal -- for competition in the Tokyo Olympics.
Although she won gold in the team event, Valieva's emotional flameout after she was controversially allowed to skate in the individual finals despite the doping disclosure was a signal image from the Tokyo Winter Olympics, which were delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Russian athletes have competed at Olympics and other international events under a neutral flag since competitors and Russian authorities were found to have conspired in a massive and "systematic" state doping conspiracy.
