Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva blamed a strawberry dessert made by her grandfather for the presence of banned doping substances that resulted in her being stripped of Olympic gold, an explanation rejected by arbitration judges.
In a report published by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the body laid out the reasons for rejecting her appeal of a case that led to a four-year doping ban handed to the teen last month.
Valieva, now 17, tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine in December 2021, with the results only becoming known after her Olympics victory. Trimetazidine, a heart medication, is a banned substance as it can boost endurance.
Valieva said she inadvertently ingested the substance because her grandfather had used a cutting board to crush his heart pills before preparing a dessert for her.
"The CAS Panel determined that this explanation was not corroborated by any concrete evidence and that the Athlete was not able to establish that she had not committed the ADVR (anti-doping rule violation) intentionally," the CAS said.
"From this basis, and according to the relevant rules, the status of 'Protected Person' that the Athlete could enjoy before the CAS ad hoc Division at the time of the Olympic Winter Games 2022, because of her young age and on the basis of the limited evidence which was available at the very beginning of the case, was no longer applicable in her situation," it added.
After the CAS ruling on January 29, the International Skating Union (ISU) changed the medal won by the Russian figure skating team -- of which Valieva was a member -- at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 from gold to bronze.
Since the test results came right after the team competition, medals for the event were never awarded as a protracted legal battle over the case commenced.
The ISU also disqualified Valieva from her fourth place showing in the women's singles event in Beijing, and from her first place finish at the European Championships in 2022.
Russian athletes have been mired in doping scandals for the past decade after revelations of a state-backed system across many sports when the country hosted the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
An investigation into the issue led to Russian athletes being forced to prove they were "clean" and they had to compete as neutrals under a Russian Olympic Committee banner -- they were banned from using the Russian name, flag, or anthem -- in subsequent games as part of International Olympic Committee sanctions.