The court in Switzerland rejects Valieva's appeal of the doping ban, and thus the Beijing 2022 Olympics scandal has reached the end of the road legally.
It was the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), which in January 2024 suspended the Russian for four years, with a retroactive start on December 25, 2021.
She had tested positive for doping in December of that year, but in February 2022, the then 15-year-old Valieva won Olympic gold with the Russian team.
After the gold, the test result was confirmed and Valieva was suspended.
The Russian has stated in her defense that she ingested the prohibited substance trimetazidine (an angina medication) by mistake. She has claimed that she ingested the substance through a strawberry dessert that her grandfather made, writes the AP news agency.
This explanation was dismissed by Cas in January 2024 and now the Supreme Court of Switzerland makes the same assessment.
Russia, which competed as a neutral team in the Beijing Olympics, was subsequently stripped of the gold medal and when Valieva's results were taken into account, the country was awarded a bronze medal instead. The United States won the gold medal and Japan won the silver.
Valieva has recently been allowed to start training again while waiting for her doping ban to expire in December. However, the selections for the Olympics in Milan and Cortina in February have already been held.
