Don’t blame Valieva, it’s not her fault, and here’s why

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The CAS proceedings can be summarized as follows. Each of the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union challenged a decision of the disciplinary committee of Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA, made on February 9, 2022. That decision lifted an earlier provisional suspension imposed on the athlete following the detection of trimetazidine in her system, from analysis of a Christmas Day urine sample.

Put another way, the IOC, WADA and the ISU were asking that Valieva remain provisionally suspended, pending the finalization of her doping proceedings in relation to that failed test. Simple enough so far.

What must be highlighted though, is while Valieva’s sample was taken on Christmas Day, the adverse analytical finding regarding the analysis on her sample was not reported to RUSADA until February 8. By that date, Valieva had already skated across two days in Beijing, as part of the Russian Olympic Committee’s gold medal-winning women’s team event.

The Russian state, and those who work within it, receive anti-doping rules as not much more than a polite suggestion.

Also the sample analysis was conducted at a WADA-accredited laboratory, in Sweden and not Russia. Russia doesn’t have a WADA-accredited laboratory – a legacy of the country’s state-sponsored and industrial-scale cheating.

What RUSADA did, once notified that Valieva’s sample had come back positive for trimetazidine (and whatever else), is take steps to provisionally suspend her. This is an entirely usual procedural step, under the WADA Code and the anti-doping rules applicable in Russia and also the policies of the IOC and the ISU.

The effect of that provisional suspension in the circumstances would certainly have at least been to prohibit Valieva’s future Games participation. The future of the ROC’s women’s team event gold medal is more problematic.

The next day though, RUSADA had a change of heart, reversing the provisional suspension. The CAS case which followed was, put simply, all about this RUSADA decision.

And it’s at this point, that the predicament of Valieva becomes complicated, and vexed. In the current iteration of the WADA Code, in force from January 1, 2021, there exists the new concept of the “protected person”. Relevantly, a protected person is someone who hasn’t yet reached the age of 16 years at the time of an anti-doping rule violation. Valieva is a protected person.

The WADA Code now deals with protected person athletes in a more nuanced, and indeed fair way. This approach recognizes a very young athlete mightn’t possess the level of experience and knowledge, to understand and appreciate the complex rules around what constitutes prohibited doping conduct.

Importantly, the WADA Code’s guidance notes expressly afford the same potential flexibility to Paralympic athletes with a documented lack of legal capacity due to an intellectual impairment.

For present purposes, while Valieva is now not provisionally suspended and thus permitted to compete at these Games, the athlete nevertheless must now go through the RUSADA disciplinary and sanctioning process triggered by the sample analysis reported by the Swedish lab.

Further (and indeed this is the vital bit), because Valieva is a protected person, the minimum sanction which might be imposed upon the determination of her guilt, is a reprimand.

While the outcome mightn’t exactly be popular, it’s quite proper and indeed appropriate Valieva is permitted the opportunity to compete in Beijing. Undoubtedly it’s an untidy and complicated situation for the Russian to be competing, with a lot of loose ends. It’s at least probable her achievements at these Games will be expunged, should she be slapped with any period of ineligibility as a result of her Christmas Day test.

But what’s the better alternative? For reasons not the fault of the athlete, she first learned of the adverse analytical finding after she’d already competed at the Games over multiple sessions of competition. The sample analysis shouldn’t have taken seven days, let alone as many weeks.

These timescales gave the athlete precisely no opportunity to take any steps to challenge the imposition of a provisional suspension, or otherwise accelerate the disciplinary process. How (un)fair is that, to a 15-year-old who may ultimately escape all punishment?

To take the opposite approach, and impose a provisional suspension on Valieva until her doping charge is determined on the merits, would be objectively harsh. If this were an athlete a decade older, who’d been notified of his or her adverse sample finding six weeks ago and therefore been given the opportunity to expedite matters, this opinion would be the opposite.

As to the Russian Olympic Committee, RUSADA and Russia itself – it’s well chronicled that RUSADA has over the past decade buried thousands of positive doping tests, wiped clean from its database as if they never existed. The Russians invented new and devious ways of doping, never put into operation.

Much of this systemic, intentional cheating occurred in late 2018 and early 2019, in the period after Russia was permitted back to the top table of world sport following its doping barstardisation and ruining of its own Winter Games of 2014. The Russian state, and those who work within it, receive anti-doping rules as not much more than a polite suggestion.

It’s an entirely farcical situation that Russian athletes compete at these Games under the ROC flag, with classical music replacing the silence where the anthem of the Russian Federation once heralded an Olympic champion. It’s an even more tremendous joke, that Russian president Vladimir Putin was lurking around with Chairman Xi at the opening ceremony in The Birdsnest, a fortnight ago.

But none of this should be permitted to infect a considered analysis of Valieva’s circumstances.

Valieva isn’t the “dirty cheater” that some contend she is. She might eventually be proved to be the cheated, such is the poisonous conduct of so many, in charge of sports in Russia. And, she’s 15 years old, FFS.

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