Banned Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva blamed her positive doping test on a strawberry dessert prepared by her grandfather on a chopping board he used to crush his medication pills, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said on Wednesday. CAS published their Arbitral Award on Wednesday, setting out the reasons for the four-year doping ban handed down to Valieva in January.
The highest court in sport had found Valieva guilty of committing an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV), following the finding of Trimetazidine (TMZ) in a sample collected from her in December 2021, during the Russian National Championships. CAS said that in her submissions, Valieva asserted that the prohibited substance entered her body through the consumption of the dessert prepared by her grandfather on a board he used to crush his pills containing TMZ. "The CAS Panel determined that this explanation was not corroborated by any concrete evidence and that the Athlete was not able to establish that she had not committed the ADRV intentionally," CAS sai