ISU defends its decision to give Russians bronze medal from Beijing Olympics after doping case

The governing body that oversees figure skating defended its decision to award the bronze medal from the 2022 Beijing Olympics to the Russian squad Friday, despite the disqualification of team member Kamila Valieva for a highly publicized doping violation that caused a reshuffling of the medals.

The International Skating Union published an amended standings late last month, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Valieva was at fault for the violation and banned her for four years. But while the ISU stripped the Russians of the 10 points she had earned in each of her two events, it declined to bump up the placement of athletes that finished below her.

That didn't matter when it came to gold and silver — the United States had enough points to move into first place and Japan had enough to move into second. But it did mean that Canada, which had finished fourth at the Winter Games, was still a single point behind the Russian team in the new ordering, keeping that nation out of the medals in the team event.

“In any complex and extraordinary situation like this, the reallocation of points could negatively affect the relative team ranking, adversely impacting teams that had nothing to do with the incident in question,” the ISU said in a statement Friday.