International skating’s governing body on Tuesday sought to end a two-year dispute by reviewing the disputed results of a figure skating competition at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. But stripping Russia of its victory in the team event, awarding the gold medal to United States and depriving Canada of the bronze it was hoping for, the sport may have only set the stage for another protracted legal battle.
The revised suspensions were announced by skating’s governing body, the International Skating Union, a day after Russian teenage star Kamila Valieva was banned for four years for doping. The exclusion of Valieva, a 15-year-old prodigy who had led Russia to an apparent victory, had the most immediate effect on the Olympic team standings: it lifted the USA to gold and Japan to silver, while, surprisingly, Russia fell as far as they could still to claim the bronze.
Within hours, the Russian Olympic Committee, already enraged by Valieva’s ban, announced it would appeal any result that stripped her of team gold. Canadian officials quickly threatened to appeal the decision as well. That left skating officials and the International Olympic Committee, which had opted not to award medals in the team event until Valieva’s doping case was resolved, wondering how they could finally arrange a “decent Olympic medal ceremony” for an ugly controversy that was nowhere to be seen. the end of it.
The decision to allow Russia to win a medal despite the presence of an athlete convicted of doping raised even more questions about Russia’s influence over top sports bodies. He also highlighted the failure of world sport to enforce doping rules and punish athletes and countries in a timely manner.
Critics have for years accused the IOC of taking a soft approach to Russia by imposing harsh sanctions that still allowed Russian athletes and teams to compete in games like the Olympics. Others noted that Russia’s anti-doping agency itself was banned when it conducted the initial investigation into Valieva’s positive test.
“It is unthinkable that a young woman, Valieva, should be thrown under the bus with a four-year ban, but Russia is allowed to retain Olympic glory with bronze,” Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. he said. “It smacks of political favoritism and there is a lot of explaining to do as the athletes deserve answers.”
Now, instead of a clean resolution to a scandal that has already dragged on for two years, figure skating – and the Olympic movement – face the prospect of new questions about doping and its consequences, and new appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport that may be needed months or even years to resolve.
In reviewing the results on Tuesday, the skating association said it disqualified Valieva and rejected all scores and results she had posted in competitions that took place after she tested positive for drugs on Christmas Day 2021. The highest – The profile of these was the Beijing Olympics weeks later, and the team event that took place early in the Games.
Her exclusion moved the United States into first place, Japan into second place and dropped Russia into third place.
But in a weird bit of math, the ISU only adjusted the final point totals for each team and didn’t redistribute the 20 points Valieva awarded to the other women’s athletes. Without the two extra points it believed it should have received from improved finishes in the women’s short and long programs, Canada was left in fourth place — just one point behind Russia’s adjusted total.
Skating Canada said it was “extremely disappointed” and that it would “consider all options to appeal this decision.” He cited a provision buried deep in the rules of skating that says competitors “originally placed lower than the disqualified competitors shall move up accordingly in their placement.”
The Russian Olympic Committee, meanwhile, said it was already preparing documents to appeal any redistribution of the team’s medals. In an earlier statement on Monday, he had questioned the “objectivity and impartiality” of the court that had banned Valieva, and like Canada pointed to the skating rulebook to bolster his position.
According to these rules, Russia said, “the results of the team events at the 2022 Winter Olympics do not depend on the outcome of the examination of Kamila Valieva’s individual case, and the awards won by our team in Beijing cannot be legally subject to review.”
Tuesday’s announcement was also stripped down Valieva for the results she achieved during her ineligibility, including not only the team race but also her fourth place in the car in Beijing and her victory at the 2022 European championships.
Her four-year ban will expire in December 2025, just in time to allow her to compete in the next Olympics, in February 2026 in Italy.
A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, on Monday derided Valieva’s ban as a “politicized decision.” On Tuesday, he broadened his criticism, implying that any outcome that removed gold from Russia was unacceptable.
“We do not agree with these decisions, neither by the court nor by the federation,” he said. “We don’t accept them.”
He added: “On their return from China, from the Olympic Games, these athletes were honored as Olympians. We are convinced that for us they will always remain Olympians. No matter what decisions were made in this regard, even unfair ones.”
The ISU, skating’s governing body, said Tuesday it would coordinate with the International Olympic Committee on the next steps to implement its decision — essentially awarding the long-delayed team event medals to the athletes who won them.
The medals themselves remain in limbo. Unclear at the time who had actually won what, the IOC took the unprecedented step of retaining possession of the team’s gold, silver and bronze medals to be awarded in Beijing. It was the first time in Olympic history that no medals were awarded in a completed event.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Juliet Macur contributed to the report.
