Doping hearing to decide Russian skater’s Olympic fate

Olympics officials have confirmed that star Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned substance prior to the Beijing Winter Olympics, and her status for the rest of the Games remained muddled on Friday.

Valieva, just 15, led her Russian teammates to the gold medal in the figure skating team competition on Monday, and became the first woman to land a quad jump at the Olympics. But the team never got their medals after a positive drug test was revealed.

The scandal has thrown figure skating at the Winter Games into a legal tailspin. Olympics officials finally addressed — sort of — Valieva’s legal status for the Games on Friday after days of unconfirmed reports and speculation. The International Testing Agency, which has overall authority to screen for doping at the Olympics, released a report on Friday confirming that a sample taken from Valieva on December 25 in Russia came back positive on February 8 for the banned metabolic agent trimetazidine, a drug used to treat angina.

While the Russian team waited for the test results from a lab in Sweden, the young skater traveled to Beijing for the Olympics. After she arrived in China, however, Valieva was immediately suspended by the Russian anti-doping agency, RUSADA. She challenged that suspension and RUSADA has temporarily lifted it, allowing her to continue training and competing. (Agencies)