Teenage Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva will go for a second Beijing Olympics title on Thursday, the next chapter in a damaging doping scandal which has overshadowed the Games.
The 15-year-old burst into tears after topping Tuesday’s first half of the women’s singles competition to put herself in prime position ahead of the all-important free skate.
Valieva has dominated the second week of the Games in the Chinese capital after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that she should not be thrown out of the Olympics despite failing a drugs test in December.
Valieva played a central role in propelling the Russians to skating team gold last week, before news of her test broke, but no medal ceremony ever took place and will not during these Olympics – unprecedented for a Games.
There will also be no medal ceremony if Valieva – the pre-Games favourite for gold – comes in the top three on Thursday.
CAS cleared her to stay at the Games, citing her age as one of the “exceptional circumstances”, but she has not been absolved of doping and still faces further investigation in a case that looks set to rumble on well after the action ends in Beijing.
Kamila Valieva put in a clean performance on Tuesday but was in tears afterwards
READ ALSOAmir Khan to Brook: I have your joker in Crawford
Games testing authorities said last week that the teenager tested positive for trimetazidine, a drug used to treat angina but which is banned for athletes by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) because it can boost endurance.
In a fresh twist, The New York Times reported that her sample also contained the substances Hypoxen and L-Carnitine, which are also used to treat heart conditions. They are not on WADA’s prohibited list.
function appendFbScript() { var js, id = 'facebook-jssdk', fjs = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
if (document.getElementById(id)) return; js = document.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=474481306711139&version=v2.0"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
window.fbAsyncInit = function () { FB.init({ appId: '474481306711139', xfbml: true, version: 'v2.0' }); FB.Event.subscribe('comment.create', function (comment_data) { console.log(comment_data); update_comments_count(); }); FB.Event.subscribe('comment.remove', function (comment_data) { update_comments_count(); });
function update_comments_count(comment_data, comment_action) { jQuery.ajax({ type: 'GET', dataType: 'json', url: 'https://sportinglife.ng/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php', data: { action: 'clear_better_facebook_comments', post_id: '1011748' }, success: function (data) { // todo sync comments count here! data have the counts }, error: function (i, b) { // todo } } ) }; };
appendFbScript(); }
appendFbScript();
})();