The International Skating Union (ISU) announced on Thursday that K. Valieva is one of four Russian skaters, all participants in the 2022 Winter Olympics, who have been recognized as “not meeting the requirements to compete as individual neutral athletes.”
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The others are men’s singles skater Mark Kondratiuk and ice dance pair Aleksandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin. No specific reasons were given in these four cases.
“The ISU will continue not to comment on individual cases while any valid rights to appeal are still available,” the union said.
The latest obstacle in the 20-year-old K. Valieva’s career arose more than four years after controversies over her positive doping test overshadowed the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. She was 15 at the time. Since then, she has spent most of her time involved in various legal disputes.
Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyaryov stated that the skaters were “wrongfully deprived of the right to participate in international competitions,” and they will be provided legal assistance to appeal these decisions to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Appeals to CAS can take several months, raising the question of whether the skaters could return to ISU events this season, even if they manage to overturn the decision.
More Russians may skate as neutral athletes
The ISU is allowing more Russian athletes to compete as neutral athletes this season, after most were banned from its events following the invasion of Ukraine. The union states that they are “considered eligible to compete unless they meet disqualification criteria.”
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This means that skaters like K. Valieva, who submitted documents to obtain neutral athlete status, were temporarily recognized as eligible but soon had this status revoked.
The ISU banned skaters from Russia and its ally Belarus from competing in 2022. It allowed a limited number of athletes to return for the Milan and Cortina Winter Olympics and last season’s qualifying tournament. Two Russian figure skaters, Adelina Petrosian and Petr Gumennik, competed at the Olympics as neutral athletes without national flags or symbols, but neither won a medal.
ISU rules state that skaters may be denied neutral athlete status if they serve in military or security forces, previously participated in military operations against Ukraine, or since 2022 have “actively and publicly supported that war.”
In another case, K. Valieva is also seeking legal review of the process related to her doping disqualification, which ended late last year.
A document published Monday by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) shows that K. Valieva filed a lawsuit against Switzerland over a federal court decision made there last year against her. At that time, she sought to have the disqualification overturned.
In her lawsuit to the European court, K. Valieva claims that the Swiss court violated her rights by refusing to consider alleged new evidence in her favor, according to the ECHR document. In the Swiss federal court, K. Valieva’s lawyers submitted a September 2024 AP news article to prove that the World Anti-Doping Agency concealed evidence.
