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General Doping Thread.

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This isn't really surprising. Cardiovascular conditions are hugely prevalent in Russians in the 65+ age group and trimetazidine is widely used. A significant number of the posters here will likely have grandparents who are on this or something similar.

The explanation of "I must have drunken from the cup he used" sounds extremely unconvincing though, especially since they apparently found a legal medication in that direction in her sample, too? I mean, she can take legal stuff as much as she wants, but that doesn't point to an accidental intake of the illegal stuff. Also I read it's something that usually only dissolves in the stomach? Don't know what you medical people say about this? (And her grandfather lives in Moscow and the Nationals were at St. Petersburg and that she drank from his cup while basically being at the competition rink also seems unlikely, I thought it didn't stay in the blood very long? But okay.)
Overall, I'm a bit surprised if they are going for this excuse, it seems very weak.
And I'm now more surprised than before they didn't suspend her, if they actually came up with this. A "I have no idea how this came into my blood" would have been more convincing to me than this, which sounds like outright and purposeful lying.

On a side note it's actually a bit funny how there hasn't been a doping scandal we can talk about in cycling for a long time, but in figure skating there is.
 
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I would take anything published by the anglo-saxon media with a pinch of salt.

Here's the video, Oswald clearly says he wasn't at the hearing and doesn't know.


Now they're making big headlines out of it :rolleyes:

"Oswald was repeating information that had been published in the press. He himself was not present at the hearing," the IOC press office said in a statement.

 
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The explanation of "I must have drunken from the cup he used" sounds extremely unconvincing though, especially since they apparently found a legal medication in that direction in her sample, too? I mean, she can take legal stuff as much as she wants, but that doesn't point to an accidental intake of the illegal stuff. Also I read it's something that usually only dissolves in the stomach? Don't know what you medical people say about this? (And her grandfather lives in Moscow and the Nationals were at St. Petersburg and that she drank from his cup while basically being at the competition rink also seems unlikely, I thought it didn't stay in the blood very long? But okay.)
Overall, I'm a bit surprised if they are going for this excuse, it seems very weak.
And I'm now more surprised than before they didn't suspend her, if they actually came up with this. A "I have no idea how this came into my blood" would have been more convincing to me than this, which sounds like outright and purposeful lying.

On a side note it's actually a bit funny how there hasn't been a doping scandal we can talk about in cycling for a long time, but in figure skating there is.
This explanation/excuse is on par with Contador's steak BS... very weak and highly unlikely.
 
And I'm now more surprised than before they didn't suspend her, if they actually came up with this. A "I have no idea how this came into my blood" would have been more convincing to me than this, which sounds like outright and purposeful lying.
CAS didn't judge the merits of the case, they looked only at the lifting of her provisional suspension and whether or not that was legit.
 
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The explanation of "I must have drunken from the cup he used" sounds extremely unconvincing though, especially since they apparently found a legal medication in that direction in her sample, too? I mean, she can take legal stuff as much as she wants, but that doesn't point to an accidental intake of the illegal stuff. Also I read it's something that usually only dissolves in the stomach? Don't know what you medical people say about this? (And her grandfather lives in Moscow and the Nationals were at St. Petersburg and that she drank from his cup while basically being at the competition rink also seems unlikely, I thought it didn't stay in the blood very long? But okay.)
Overall, I'm a bit surprised if they are going for this excuse, it seems very weak.
And I'm now more surprised than before they didn't suspend her, if they actually came up with this. A "I have no idea how this came into my blood" would have been more convincing to me than this, which sounds like outright and purposeful lying.

On a side note it's actually a bit funny how there hasn't been a doping scandal we can talk about in cycling for a long time, but in figure skating there is.
I've made no comment on her defence, mainly because I haven't seen it. I was just replying to a post saying that her having a grandparent who takes that drug isn't surprising considering what it is.

If her defence is it is because she drank from the same cup, well that seems unlikely. The formulations I know of trimetazidine are tablets, so the idea that she could drink from a cup that held the water her grandfather used to swallow the tablets (because I don't know anyone who puts the tablets in the water) and test positive based on that seems incredibly unlikely. I don't know if there is a dispersible formulation, occasionally they're made for people who can't take tablets, but that would be very easy to find out. Even then we're talking very small amounts left over of a drug that has a half-life of about 10 hours, we'd need to see the supposed timeline and the concentration detected.

I agree that it doesn't sound great, and if that's really what they think happened they could easily have provided more context that would have made it more believable. I think that athletes, and their team around them, feel a need to come up with a reason, rather than just say they don't know why it was there. In this case I also would have believed an "I have no idea how it got there" defence, especially as the performance enhancing properties of these drugs are quite questionable.
 
She didn't come up with any theories about how her grandfather's medicine got into her body.

Her grandfather confirmed in a video message that he was taking the drug, although he did not give any evidence.

Her mother claimed that the grandfather meets Valieva daily after training and drives her home. No evidence of that either though.

https://dossier.center/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/wada-t793l3d.pdf
This is from the 11th and is WADA's application to CAS. It does not detail what was discussed in the hearing.

This is from today and claims that a contaminated glass was a possibility put forward by Valieva lawyer:


And links this as the source:

 
This is from the 11th and is WADA's application to CAS. It does not detail what was discussed in the hearing.

This is from today and claims that a contaminated glass was a possibility put forward by Valieva lawyer:


And links this as the source:


Alright, looks like her lawyer came up with some wild theories at the RUSADA hearing.

The sitting of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Beijing lasted almost seven hours. The Russian Anti-Doping Disciplinary Commission handled Valiyeva's case faster: the first hearing in her case on 9 February lasted only one and a half hours - its audio recording was made available to the Dossier Centre. The athlete was represented by her mother Alsu Valieva and Anna Kozmenko, lawyer of Schellenberg Wittmer. On the side of RUSADA, Valeria German, head of the results processing department, acted.

The main line of defence is that the concentration of trimetazidine found in the athlete is negligible, 2.1 nanograms per milliliter, and the substance entered her system accidentally through contaminated food. The contaminated product was the athlete's own grandfather. The man, who lives 40 kilometres from the Valievs' home in Moscow, takes Kamila to training every day and stays at home with her until her mother returns from work. The elderly man has an artificial heart and takes trimetazidine medication when he hears noises.

"There could be absolutely different ways how it [trimetazidine] got into [Valieva's body]," said lawyer Kozmenko. - For example, her grandfather drank something from a glass, some saliva got into it, and the glass was somehow used by the athlete afterwards. Or the medication was placed on a surface, traces were left, then the medication was placed on this surface, which the athlete then drank.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I guess they had more time to prepare for the CAS hearing and came up with a more plausible story to allow her to compete.
 
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I find it a bit precious to watch us Americans calling for Russia to be sent home (which they probably should be) on the day of the Super Duper Bowl, the biggest Roid fest of the year.
I’ve commented several times on this forum about how ridiculous the NFL and NBA with obvious PED use and so little testing and penalties. But because they’re not even trying to address the issue, there’s nothing to analyze or debate. It’s in the sports where there ARE attempts to restrict doping that these arguments/debates come up.
 
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Alright, looks like her lawyer came up with some wild theories at the RUSADA hearing.



I guess they had more time to prepare for the CAS hearing and came up with a more plausible story to allow her to compete.
No, those theories were not mentioned in the document you posted, which as WADAs application to CAS, so they must have come up at the CAS hearing. Whoever came up with it, her lawyer speaks for her so it’s as good as her suggesting it herself. It’s just a mess, and it’s being played out in the media when it should have been behind closed doors. This is really unfair on a 15 year old.
 
I’ve commented several times on this forum about how ridiculous the NFL and NBA with obvious PED use and so little testing and penalties. But because they’re not even trying to address the issue, there’s nothing to analyze or debate. It’s in the sports where there ARE attempts to restrict doping that these arguments/debates come up.
It’s the biggest gripe many of us have when anyone accuses cycling of having more doping than any other sport. They just don’t look as hard.
 
No, those theories were not mentioned in the document you posted, which as WADAs application to CAS, so they must have come up at the CAS hearing. Whoever came up with it, her lawyer speaks for her so it’s as good as her suggesting it herself. It’s just a mess, and it’s being played out in the media when it should have been behind closed doors. This is really unfair on a 15 year old.

No. See the translation in my previous comment. The website clearly states that these theories come from the RUSADA hearing, which took place on February 9, the day after the positive case was announced - https://dossier.center/kamila/

The sitting of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Beijing lasted almost seven hours. The Russian Anti-Doping Disciplinary Commission handled Valiyeva's case faster: the first hearing in her case on 9 February lasted only one and a half hours - its audio recording was made available to the Dossier Centre. The athlete was represented by her mother Alsu Valieva and Anna Kozmenko, lawyer of Schellenberg Wittmer. On the side of RUSADA, Valeria German, head of the results processing department, acted.

As far as I know, there is no public information about the CAS hearing, what was said and what Valieva's lawyer argued there.
 
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