Russian skater’s strawberry dessert excuse was rejected by judges in Olympic doping case
A strawberry dessert contaminated by her grandfather’s heart medication was offered in sport's highest court as a possible cause of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test
PARIS (AP) — A strawberry dessert contaminated by her grandfather’s heart medication might have caused Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test, her lawyers argued at sport’s highest court, which rejected the explanation and banned her for four years.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Wednesday published the 129-page detailed ruling from its three judges to explain why they imposed the ban last week on Valieva, whose doping case at age 15 stunned the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
The word “strawberry” features 43 times in the document that details why the judges rejected the argument.
The CAS judges were asked to believe that Valieva’s grandfather “accidentally dropped a pill into the dessert while he was preparing it or because there were crushed residues of a (trimetazidine) tablet on the chopping board he used to prepare the dessert."
