A decision will be made Monday on whether Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva will be allowed to continue competing in the Beijing Olympics amid her doping scandal.
Three judges with the Court of Arbitration for Sport will hear testimony Sunday in the appeal of the 15-year-old skater’s interim ban after she failed a pre-Olympics doping test. The jurists will then announce their decision Monday afternoon.
Valieva is scheduled to speak by video to the panel during the closed-door session in a conference room at a Beijing hotel.
“The athlete will be online and she will testify,” said Matthieu Reeb, the court’s director general. “We suppose she will speak in Russian, and we have an interpreter.”
Valieva’s positive test for a banned heart medication was flagged on Monday by a laboratory in Sweden six weeks after the sample was taken in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Before the lab reported the results, she helped Russia to win gold in the team figure skating event, becoming the first woman to land a quadruple jump at an Olympics.
The Russian Anti-Doping Agency imposed an automatic ban from competition, before lifting it on appeal.
But that decision has been challenged by the International Olympic Committee, World Anti-Doping Agency and International Skating Union — prompting the Sunday hearing.
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The decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport will determine whether the Russian Olympic Committee will be awarded the top honors in the team event. The verdict will come just over 24 hours ahead of Valieva’s next scheduled Olympic event — the women’s individual competition — in which she is the heavy favorite.
The ROC claimed that Valieva has “repeatedly passed doping tests” prior to the positive result on Dec. 25.
With Post wires