Russia faced renewed calls to be booted out of international sport despite Kamila Valieva being spared expulsion from the Winter Olympics.
The 15-year old figure skater, who has tested positive for heart drug Trimetazidine, is not only free to compete in the Individual event, she is hot favourite to win it.
The decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to delay judgement on the starlet and instead kick the can down the road is understandable on a human level.
The sight of a child being publicly eviscerated at the Olympics, made to take the walk of shame to the airport in front of the world’s cameras would, CAS recognised, cause “irreparable harm”.
But the fact an athlete with a failed drugs test, albeit from outside of the Games, is permitted to continue has caused widespread unease.
Travis Tygart, head of the US Anti-Doping Agency, said Russia had "hijacked the competition" and again "stolen the moment from clean athletes".
International athlete-led pressure group Global Athlete declared that Valieva being found to have a performance-enhancing substance in her system is “evidence of abuse of a minor”.
“The doping of minor athletes must be stopped,” GA demanded. “It is unacceptable that these risks have been placed on a 15-year old.
“Any country that systematically dopes its athletes cannot be allowed to participate in international sport.”
GA contends it is “blatantly clear” Valieva would never have found herself in this position had the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), International Olympic Committee (IOC) and CAS “done their jobs” and banned Russia from global sport.
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“Russia has never been incentivised to reform because sport leaders favoured politics over principle and rebranding over banning,” it said.
“Athletes have lost confidence in the global anti-doping system.”
On the eve of these Olympics the boss of WADA, Olivier Niggli, told this paper that the system put in place for Beijing is “probably the most robust of all Games”.
What he did not know was a sample Valieva gave on Christmas Day would get lost in the testing pipeline for 45 days and only surface last week.
It has since emerged that the Stockholm lab where it was sent was hit by Covid, causing a logjam. Anti-doping agencies were informed of this and urged to flag up any priority samples.
The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) did not, allegedly, notify them of Valieva’s pending test despite her having just become national champion with a near-perfect score.
The upshot is the mess we are in now. Valieva competes but there will be no medal ceremony either for Team or Individual event.
Only once the five-ringed circus has left town and the eyes of the sporting world turn away from China will her fate be decided.
It is possible she could keep what she wins here as, being a ‘protected person’ under the WADA code, any punishment is likely to be reduced and backdated to Christmas Day.
That would not go down well with Team runners-up USA, who condemned this episode as “another chapter in the systemic and pervasive disregard for clean sport by Russia”.
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