The Kamila Valieva case was a long battle that resulted in the 17-year-old Russian figure skating icon facing the stringent rules of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Imposed with a four-year ban from the sport, her case provided a ruling that showed the importance of “clean sports” and may earn the USA its Olympic gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

Despite the lengthy legal proceedings, Kamila Valieva’s defense introduced an intriguing dimension to the case, which went over 700 days after the violation occurred. Let’s learn more about Valieva’s defense and why it didn’t hold at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Kamila Valieva’s defense regarding the banned substance

In a detailed 129-page ruling, the Court of Arbitration outlined why they imposed the ban on Kamila Valieva. Valieva offered three possible situations in her defense to explain the presence of ‘Trimetazidine (TMZ)’ in her system. In the first, Valieva mentioned that she and her grandfather often had lunch together, during which he would give her treats like apple puree or berry sweets. She explained that her grandfather takes pills as per his doctor’s advice, and one of these pills might have mistakenly ended up in the dessert he prepared for her. Alternatively, she recalled seeing her grandfather crush pills with a knife and dissolve them in a glass before consuming them, sharing, “So I might have drunk from the same glass or there, at home, I might have eaten something from the same chopping board and so on.”

The next defense shared by her was the contamination of some medications, which had happened in the past as well. The third reason stated by Valieva was the organization of the event itself. She suggested that during the Russian Championship in St. Petersburg, there were lapses in security. She noted that the premises where athletes prepared were accessible to unauthorized individuals, including relatives of athletes and other strangers, and lax security could have contributed to the presence of the banned substance in her system. Despite the detailed situations, why didn’t her defense hold at the CAS?

Why did the Court of Arbitration for Sport still ban her?

Kamila Valieva’s defense didn’t hold at the Court of Arbitration for Sport because she couldn’t prove, according to their rules, that she didn’t intentionally use the banned substance ‘Trimetazidine (TMZ)’ she tested positive for. The burden of proof was on her to show that her positive test wasn’t intentional.

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