Canadian Olympic figure skaters get court date for medals appeal in Valieva doping case

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The final appeal hearing to decide medals from the 2022 Beijing Olympics doping case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva will be heard days before the Paris Olympics open.

A hearing on July 22 for eight Canadian skaters seeking to get team event bronze medals will be held in the Swiss city Lausanne, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said Friday.

The Summer Games formally open four days later and the International Olympic Committee aims to finally present medals in Paris for the figure skating team event from Beijing before the closing ceremony on Aug. 11. That will be 2½ years after Valieva helped Russia skate to team gold, ahead of the United States, Japan and fourth-placed Canada.

Medals were never presented in Beijing because a positive test by the then-15-year-old Valieva from a sample given six weeks earlier in Russia was alerted in the global anti-doping system only after the Olympic competition was completed.

Valieva was eventually disqualified from the Olympics, and banned from the sport for four years, by a different CAS panel of judges in January. The judges did not accept her lawyers' claim she was contaminated by a banned heart medication that got into a strawberry dessert prepared by her grandfather.

That CAS verdict meant the U.S. team was upgraded to the gold-medal position and Japan to silver.

However, when the International Skating Union stripped points earned by Valieva from the Russian team’s total, the method of not adding points to skaters who finished behind her left Canada still in fourth place.

Three Russian appeals to CAS against the ISU’s amended result — from the Russian athletes, their national skating federation and the Russian Olympic body seeking to be restored to gold — were heard on June 12. Those verdicts have not been published.

The Canadian appeal to get the bronze medals is the last to be heard.

The IOC executive board has the final decision on reallocating Olympic medals when results are affected by doping cases. Athletes whose result is later upgraded are consulted about getting their medals at an appropriate future ceremony, such as at a world championships or future Olympics.

In Paris, medalists will be celebrated at a Champions Park venue at the Trocadéro, close to the Eiffel Tower.