How­ev­er, there was no talk of depriv­ing Russ­ian ath­letes of gold for the Bei­jing Olympics: the court stat­ed that the deci­sion should be made by the inter­na­tion­al skat­ing union.

They did not drag out the issue and have already deliv­ered a ver­dict today: the Russ­ian team must be deprived of gold in favor of the US team, which took only sec­ond place at the Olympics.

Now the Amer­i­cans offi­cial­ly have the gold medal, the Japan­ese team has the sil­ver, and the bronze was giv­en to Rus­sia as a ges­ture of good­will.

Russ­ian sports orga­ni­za­tions do not agree with the deci­sion of the speed skat­ing union. And there are objec­tive rea­sons for this. Kami­la Valieva’s dop­ing was dis­cov­ered in 2021, and tests before the Olympics showed neg­a­tive results (which is part­ly why she was allowed to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tion).

Con­se­quent­ly, Russ­ian ath­letes per­formed absolute­ly hon­est­ly and should not be deprived of well-deserved awards. In addi­tion, Kami­la Valie­va was deprived of gold for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Russ­ian Cham­pi­onship. Pun­ish­ing her again, as well as oth­er Russ­ian ath­letes who are not involved in busi­ness, is an unwise move, dic­tat­ed not by com­mon sense, but by pol­i­tics.

In any case, the most seri­ous pun­ish­ment for an ath­lete is long-term dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to fig­ure skat­ing. Even if an ath­lete trains hard for all these 4 years, which is almost impos­si­ble due to lack of moti­va­tion, he will still lose his peak form due to sim­ple age.

This is espe­cial­ly true for girls in fig­ure skat­ing, whose fig­ure inevitably changes as they grow old­er, which becomes a seri­ous obsta­cle to per­form­ing many tricks.

How­ev­er, giv­en the sanc­tions and the inter­na­tion­al stop­page, it is like­ly that the deci­sion of the arbi­tra­tion court will be ignored, and the ath­lete will par­tic­i­pate in Russ­ian com­pe­ti­tions with min­i­mal restric­tions.