Olympic chiefs have announced that they would welcome an anti-doping investigation into the entourage of Russian child skater Kamila Valieva.
The 15-year old is facing being stripped of her Olympic team gold medal and sent home after failing a drugs test.
She is so young that she qualifies as a ‘protected person’ under World Anti-Doping rules and, as such, should not have been publicly identified.
But her name was released yesterday by the International Testing Agency, who confirmed she had tested positive for heart drug trimetazidine, which is proven to improve physical efficiency.
There is great unease that she is being left to face the music alone, a state of affairs skating legend Katarina Witt said “cannot be surpassed in inhumanity”.
She added: "Kamila is a young girl and child prodigy, whose highly difficult performances and grace enchanted the whole world at only 15, a minor, depending on adults and she is not to blame here.
"In this case she probably followed her coach and medical team. It is a shame, and the responsible adults should be banned from the sport forever!!!”
The matter is with the Court of Arbitration, who could even rule on the matter today, but in the meantime the International Olympic Committee have encouraged an inquiry into those with a duty of care for her.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams said: ”Entourage has been overlooked in the past. The IOC, as ever, would welcome investigation into the entourage in all cases where it's relevant.
“In this case, as in all cases, we would welcome a strong line [from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada)] on that. Entourage ranges from doctors and coaches, parents everyone."
Up in the mountains of Zhangjiakou, Charlotte Bankes showed what might have been with a storming snowboard cross performance.
Britain’s world champion crashed out in the individual quarter-finals to deal medal-less Team GB a devastating blow.
In today’s team event she underlined why she is the best in the business by going from first to last to win her race.
Competing with rookie Brit Hugh Nightingale she was left with a 1.5secs gap to make up on her three rivals and ripped past them to win.
The semi-final proved a step too far but the pair rallied to seal a sixth placed finish behind US duo Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner, golden oldies with a combined age of 76.
