Peking – Global interests are currently accumulating in Kamila Valiyeva, this little person who has the power to jump. After the last piano chord, the 15-year-old looked up at the hall ceiling with tears in her eyes. What a pressure on the student. Despite a positive doping test, the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decided in an urgent procedure that Valiewa was allowed to start in the women’s singles. But it is conditional. The program largely succeeded on Tuesday. With 82.16 points, the 15-year-old Russian is the leader in Thursday’s freestyle.
Her legal representation had previously presented “reasons that cast doubt on her guilt.” This was announced by Denis Oswald, chairman of the disciplinary commission of the International Olympic Committee, on Tuesday in Beijing. The hearing was private.
A sip from Valiyeva’s grandfather’s glass
According to reports in the Russian media, Valiyeva’s grandpa story applies: the girl could have drunk from a glass that her grandfather had previously used. The banned substance could have entered her body through saliva transmission. Valiewa had tested positive for the heart drug trimetazidine at the end of December. The finding became known during the Winter Games in Beijing.
Now the world knows many stories, from too many avocados to sweets from Peru to a sick mother-in-law, which were used as excuses for doping offences. The Nuremberg doping expert Fritz Sörgel says: “The amount for a positive doping sample cannot get into the body through saliva on the edge of a glass” and recommends not only examining the B sample of the team Olympic champion, but also the negative tests that have been carried out since then.
If the statements made by the European champion from Russia turned out to be incorrect and she had received the funds from her training environment, it would be “a criminal act and ruthless against a young person,” said Sörgel. “Apparently everything is being tried not to bring state doping back into play.” Russia’s Olympic ban due to doping cover-up and data manipulation expires at the end of the year.
The IOC had decided that if Valiyeva won another medal, as in the team competition, there would be no award ceremony at the Winter Games either.