A banned figure skater blamed her grandad’s strawberry pudding for a doping scandal but she is back dazzling on the ice after a four-year absence
A dazzling figure skater blamed her grandad’s strawberry pudding for a doping ban before she made her return to the ice four years later.
Russian ace Kamila Valieva, who celebrated her 20th birthday last week, was slapped with a ban for doping rule violations when she was aged just 15. But her career finally got the opportunity to get back on track when she was free to compete again at the start of this year.
Returning to the ice in the Russian Skate Jumping Championship, the glamorous ice star was unable to compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics because she was still banned at the time of the qualifying.
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Valieva has 1.5million followers on Instagram and has been loving her return to action with her regularly posting snaps of her competing. And she even appeared at a meet event where she flaunted her long legs wearing a stylish white dress and high heels.
The gold medal winner at the 2020 World Junior Championships achieved her dream of winning an Olympic gold at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February 2022, where she became the first female skater to land a quadruple jump during a Games. But her world came crashing down around her, and her triumph was expunged from the history books.
It emerged shortly after the Games that she had tested positive for heart medication trimetazidine – classed as a performance-enhancing drug – during the Russian Figure Skating Championship six weeks earlier.
A Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) investigation concluded that Valieva had “no fault or negligence” for the violation.
But the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and she was stripped of her medal and slapped with a suspension backdated to December 25, 2021.
Valieva told an arbitration that her positive test could have been caused by a strawberry dessert prepared by her grandad on the same chopping that he used to crush his heart pills containing TMZ, which is a drug used to prevent angina.
However, the court rejected her explanation, saying: “The CAS panel determined that this explanation was not corroborated by any concrete evidence and that the athlete was not able to establish that she had not committed the ADRV intentionally.”
Valieva’s competition results since the date of the offence, including the gold medal she helped the Russian Olympic Committee win, were all voided.
Still just 20, Valieva can look forward to her prime years on the ice but there’s no doubt the ban has taken its toll on her career.