No medal ceremony for Kamila Valieva at Winter Olympics as WADA slam reinstatement

Kamila Valieva has been cleared to compete again at the Winter Olympics but the International Olympic Committee say there will be no medal ceremony if she finishes on the podium.

The 15-year-old Russian figure skater was provisionally suspended last week after failing a drugs test, but on Monday the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that she should be allowed to compete.

Sport’s highest court adjudged that ‘exceptional circumstances’ – namely that Valieva is under 16 years old – meant she is a protected person, while they also cited issues around the timing of the test result.

The ruling criticised the length of time it took for the positive test to be revealed – with the teenager testing positive for angina-prevention drug trimetazidine on December 25 last year – and said ‘such late notification was not her fault’.

As Valieva is still subject to a disciplinary procedure relating to the positive drugs test which will not be heard until after the Games are over, CAS felt that preventing her from competing when she could yet be cleared ‘would cause her irreparable harm’.

But the decision to allow an athlete who has failed a drugs test to compete on the world’s biggest stage has drawn a huge amount of criticism, while the IOC say she will not receive a medal if she finishes in the top three in the women’s single skating competition which begins on Tuesday.

A statement from the IOC read: ‘In the interest of fairness to all athletes and the National Olympic Committees concerned, it would not be appropriate to hold the medal ceremony for the figure skating team event during the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 as it would include an athlete who on the one hand has a positive A-sample, but whose violation of the anti-doping