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Feb. 14, 2021 — A mockery which could affect more than just one competition
Only a few hours ago, the Court of Arbitration for Sport pretty much overlooked an established fact when it comes to the Olympics: that is, that a Russian figure skater had tested positive for a banned substance.
But in overlooking the offense, allowing Kamila Valieva to continue competition at Beijing 2020, it has torn down perhaps the last shreds of credibility that the World Anti-Doping Agency has carefully crafted to try to combat the likes of Balco, the East German doping machine, the Chinese swimming teams of the 1990s, and the Russian doping machine whose very existence resulted in a worldwide ban in multiple sports.
You see, Russia has been given a slight reprieve from an overall ban, as a number of athletes and teams are allowed to compete as long as it is not under the Russian flag.
And the people around Valieva have taken that reprieve and flipped it upside down. Someone, somewhere, administered not one, but three heart drugs to the young skater. One, trimetazidine, is banned. The other two, hypoxen and L-Carnatine, are not.
These drugs, mind, were given to a 15-year-old.
Valieva’s age has become a focal point of the conspiracy to get her to Beijing to compete. Because she is a “protected person” under the World Anti-Doping Code, her sample did not have her name on it, and just had the word “Athlete” on the tube.
WADA and the IOC had been working so closely together that there is a show on the Olympic Channel dedicated to the restoration of Olympic medals which were won unfairly through doping. The show, “Take The Podium,” shows the stories of athletes who have waited up to a decade or more to receive their rightful medals, and that, in some cases, there is room for restorative justice.
Instead, the CAS has overlooked all that and allowed Valieva to compete in the Olympics in singles competition, having already won gold in the team skating competition.
But there has not been a medal ceremony for the team skaters and there won’t be a medal ceremony for women’s singles if Valieva is in the top three.
Perhaps the lack of a medal ceremony is a not-so-tacit admission that there is a problem which is beyond fixing on the part of the IOC, WADA, or any national anti-doping agency.
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