Kamila Valieva: Anti-doping Case and Follow-ups

[Plisskin]

Regardless, next time someone competes and they test positive, they have grounds now to compete while they "investigate". No more Jessica Catalang's or Shacarri Richardson's should happen after this ruling. It'll make a mess of future competitions if their tests come back confirmed months later, but that is the precedent they have set with this ruling. Minor or not.

 

[silveruskate]

I specifically said she was reprimanded, not suspended.

"protected person" is discussed and dismissed because

"The Panel is nevertheless of the view that, in order for an athlete to be bound to anti-doping rules, the issue of age is in principle of no relevance."

This wasn't by CAS. She didn't appeal anything, I mean no reason as it was just a caution so it didn't go there. If ISU was making a statement by Kamila they would say the EXACT same thing. So this case being cited is 100% wrong. Fact is ISU doesn't understand the rules according to CAS the final arbiter.

 

[[email protected]]

According to that article, trimetazidine pills dissolve in the intestines. I suspect her grandfather's glass doesn't contain his toilet water.

Yeah, yeah what a source - some article tried to ridicule one of potential hypothesis. But look at the picture. This is trimetazidine that is sold in Russian pharmacies, I don't see capsules that dissolve in the intestines here.

 

[Cilla70]

For those who say it is only a trace amount, let’s be real. Trace amounts also can mean the substance level has diminished due to the amount of time it was in her system or only low levels used. Levels of drugs diminish as it is absorbed and metabolized That’s why we have to take medications daily or multiple times daily depending on the reason for the use of the drug. Also this drug is used to control Angina which occurs normally around the age of 50 or older and is more common in males. Why would a 15 year old girl with no known heart condition even have trace amounts in their systems.

 

[anonymoose_au]

so why was Calalang ultimately found innocent? Or the Rickard case?

It's a broken system... power with no accountability should never go together.

Don't know who Rickard is but with Jessica it wasn't that she didn't test positive, it was that the ingestion was completely accidental so her ban which had gone on for 8 months was immediately lifted.

Kamila also claims accidental ingestion, but unlike Jessica she gets to compete while mounting her defence. That's unfair.

Unless CAS compensates the admittedly few athletes who were found to have accidentally ingested a banned substance then it's seriously unfair for those people.

 

[el henry]

I don't want to go into legal details, but theft and robbery belong to a different category of crimes. A crime that would be similar to the doping situation would be driving under influence. In this case a person can be acquitted if it is established that their blood alcohol levels were positive due to a medical condition (like diabetes), or a person consumed something which he or she did not know contains alcohol, which is the case with some dairy products due to fermentation.

I am aware of the law

But your examples are not analogous. Kamila's positive test is not due to a medical condition. If she can prove the incredibly strained theory about her grandfather (does her team not realize that people are laughing at them because of this story?) then yes, it could possibly be a defense to a DUI, much like the fermented milk.

But if you are aware of the law, in a strict liability system such as WADA, the test is sufficient. There is no mens rea requirement, which was the original proposition. I say again, as far as I can tell, motivation is not relevant.

 

[Ducky]

I found a source for you. Actually, there are many sources, but this one is a bit easer to understand than others owing to chemistry data involved. This source is footnoted to peer-reviewed science journals.

The half life of TMZ is 7.81 years for a young person. 11+ for an older person. The tests were on 35 mg tablets, as far as I can tell.

Trimetazidine: Uses, Interactions, Mechanism of Action | DrugBank Online

Trimetazidine is a piperazine derivative indicated as an adjunct therapy in symptomatic treatment of stable angina pectoris.

go.drugbank.com

You mean 7.81 HOURS.

From your source, " In young, healthy subjects, the half life of trimetazidine is 7.81 hours.3,9 In patients over 65, the half life increases to 11.7 hours.3,9"

 

[TontoK]

You mean 7.81 HOURS.

From your source, " In young, healthy subjects, the half life of trimetazidine is 7.81 hours.3,9 In patients over 65, the half life increases to 11.7 hours.3,9"

Well, that's interesting. Was she casually visiting with her grandpa, sipping from his water glass during Russian Nationals?

 

[Amei]

Regardless, next time someone competes and they test positive, they have grounds now to compete while they "investigate". No more Jessica Catalang's or Shacarri Richardson's should happen after this ruling. It'll make a mess of future competitions if their tests come back confirmed months later, but that is the precedent they have set with this ruling. Minor or not.

As CAS specified it was tied to her being a protected person they may have prevented this case from being used as a past precedent.

The governing bodies however need to either raise the ISU age of eligibility for seniors or the IOC needs to implement it at least for the Olympics since it's usually a 1 shot opportunity for so many

 

[el henry]

And as a woman of a certain age, I will say I am upset about one thing:

What's this with blaming Gramps and Grammy? Why do you think Grammy and Gramps are blithering idiots?

If I am Gramps to a potential Olympic medalist granddaughter, and I don't care if I am taking aspirin that any fool could buy from a pharmacy,

No. WAY. is my granddaughter anywhere near that glass with my medication. I drink it, I wash it, I put "Keep Out" signs around the glass.

You can't tell me Babushka and Dedushka are that stupid. I refuse to believe it.

Justice for Grammy and Gramps!

 

[Szayel008]

It is worth noting that the team doctor Shvetsky has indeed been caught before. He already had a three year ban because of a 2007 doping incident with the Russian rowing team.

There was no banned drug.
He introduced a legal drug into the body in an acceptable dosage in a non-standard way (intravenously).
And then when they discovered medical waste, at first they thought that he was transfusing the rowers with blood.

 

[Tomadeur]

I am aware of the law

But your examples are not analogous. Kamila's positive test is not due to a medical condition. If she can prove the incredibly strained theory about her grandfather (does her team not realize that people are laughing at them because of this story?) then yes, it could possibly be a defense to a DUI, much like the fermented milk.

But if you are aware of the law, in a strict liability system such as WADA, the test is sufficient. There is no mens rea requirement, which was the original proposition. I say again, as far as I can tell, motivation is not relevant.

I would like to add that the WADA code offers the possibility of lifting the provisional suspension in some cases.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

The one thing I'm shocked by is that Russia sent samples over to the lab that someone on Eteri's team would have known had a possibility to come back positive. Were there non-Russian WADA representatives collecting these at Russian Nationals? This would be the one event where I'd expect samples to be swapped out if there were doping issues.

 

[el henry]

I would like to add that the WADA code offers the possibility of lifting the provisional suspension in some cases.

Yes, of course it does, it was lifted here.

I am just saying that the criminal law does not always require proof of intent, which I believe was the OP to which I was responding. More geeking out.

 

[matin calin]

I think the problem is just that no matter how competent you are, doping (like any drug administration) is never an exact science - and while the doctor has gotten caught before, he also hasn't gotten caught again until now, which means it's been over a decade. So seen from that angle I guess his track record is actually quite good?

For me, the most likely explanation is that they administered this drug frequently and that it must have had some effect, because as you say, otherwise, why risk it? The man's an anaesthesist, afaik, and if there's no benefit to administering it only sometimes... well, the most likely explanation is, they didn't only give it to her sometimes. Clean tests before and after don't necessarily prove that she was always clean then, just that they timed the dosage better (and that's not only for Valieva, of course, this goes for any athlete of any country; microdosing and and ever-evolving development of new chemicals pretty much guarantee that no doping test is foolproof). Figure skaters don't get tested every week, after all. But as I said before, we'll never know the truth here without a whistleblower or something.

I also think that if they did administer something, it was done regularly and not every now and then cos why not, as some suggest. They must have put so much at stake only if it was strongly motivated from a medical standpoint.

And this is why I think it'd be interesting to find out what minimal TMZ amount can have therapeutic effect and, based on this data (and Kamila's physique, level of activity and other medically relevant parameters), how much time it is needed for the substance to become undetectable. Even a rough estimation would be helpful in understanding if the regular consumption version is sustainable.

For example:
- X mg TMZ is a minimal dose that gives some benefit to the skater;
- it takes Y days (weeks?) for the substance to leave the system;
- she is proven to be clean on A, B, C dates

--- > What was the approximate consumption frequency of TMZ in Kamila?

If solving this equation indicates that she could only take TMZ let's say a couple of times a month, I'd say accusing team Tut and Kamila of intentional doping is not logical. If it would mean a possible frequency of 2+ times per week (or whatever is considered systematic consumption) - then it's a different story.

 

[Scott512]

She will skate as always; it will not affect her one bit. This is neither supportive of her or hopeful on my part. Frankly while before I was in awe of the threesome, I am no longer an admirer of theirs or their coaching team. Kamila is going to be 16 in a couple of months. Will she suddenly not be a minor to be protected at all costs because of her emotional fragility? Kamila is not a child; she's a teenager. She's less than a year younger than Alysa Liu. This sets a horrible precedent and the only solution to this protection clause is to raise the age of Oly and World competitions to 16 and be done with it.

She hasn't been protected at all costs. I hope she has people around her who can counsel her counsel her outside of family and coaches. In recent years there's been a lot of discussion about the mental health of athletes and that's a good thing. Too many have issues that go on and on and on. I'd like to have the world rallied around Simone Biles last summer many Manny cut her slack that would not have happened 15 years ago.

Anyway I like your idea of age 16 for Olympics and worlds and Euros. That is very reasonable. But remember it was the IOC that created these rules to give olympic athletes under the age of 16 extra protections. That would the age goes to 16 there won't be an a loophole to be taken advantage of in some people's eyes.

 

[skatedreamer]

And as a woman of a certain age, I will say I am upset about one thing:

What's this with blaming Gramps and Grammy? Why do you think Grammy and Gramps are blithering idiots?

If I am Gramps to a potential Olympic medalist granddaughter, and I don't care if I am taking aspirin that any fool could buy from a pharmacy,

No. WAY. is my granddaughter anywhere near that glass with my medication. I drink it, I wash it, I put "Keep Out" signs around the glass.

You can't tell me Babushka and Dedushka are that stupid. I refuse to believe it.

Justice from Grammy and Gramps!

Speaking as another woman of a certain age, thanks! Your post made me. On a more serious note, I do have a terrible feeling that Kamila's family was somehow coerced into going along with that story.
I'd really REALLY like to be wrong about that.

 

[ice coverage]

so why was Calalang ultimately found innocent? ...

... with Jessica it wasn't that she didn't test positive, it was that the ingestion was completely accidental so her ban which had gone on for 8 months was immediately lifted.

The injustice for Calalang was that WADA's laboratory protocol at the time was not sufficient to distinguish between use of the innocent (non-prohibited) cosmetic ingredient chlorphenesin and use of the banned substance meclofenoxate.

WADA originally did not know that both the innocent chlorphenesin and the banned meclofenoxate can be a source of the metabolite 4-CPA, which is the marker that WADA was using as an indicator of the banned meclofenoxate.

Calalang's misfortune was caused by WADA's incomplete scientific knowledge.

Calalang did not ingest a banned substance. Period.
In her case, there was no ingestion of a banned substance -- not even accidental ingestion.

 

[Amei]

And as a woman of a certain age, I will say I am upset about one thing:

What's this with blaming Gramps and Grammy? Why do you think Grammy and Gramps are blithering idiots?

If I am Gramps to a potential Olympic medalist granddaughter, and I don't care if I am taking aspirin that any fool could buy from a pharmacy,

No. WAY. is my granddaughter anywhere near that glass with my medication. I drink it, I wash it, I put "Keep Out" signs around the glass.

You can't tell me Babushka and Dedushka are that stupid. I refuse to believe it.

Justice from Grammy and Gramps!

The contaminated water thing is ridiculous if that's the "explanation" at least go with the scenario that she takes an innocent and legal multivitamin or something that looks a lot like grandpa's pill and both pills were set out for them to take at breakfast and they mixed up the pills and she accidentally took grandpa's pill < a pill mixup is way more believable, my mother's coworker mixed up her night-time and daytime meds which resulted in her taking her prescription sleeping pill in the morning, by the time she got to the office they thought she was having a stroke with how out it she was (how she managed to drive to work without killing someone is a miracle), she figured it out that night when she went to take her sleeping pill and it wasn't in the pill case.

 

[Draculus]

Actually, the whole granpa story can be kind of verified and without too much difficulties.
Time passed till actual test is know, concentration in the sample in known (lab measured metabolites, so it can be calculated).
Age, gender, mass, other relevant things are also known (or can be measured if something like blood pH is required to very high precision or I do not know what is important here).

If she drinks from that glass, so she can say how much she drank (let's say 2 sips) - so amount of water with supposed TMZ is also known.
If her grandpa really has heart problems (can be verified via his doctor) and he takes TMZ (probably by doctor prescription, which can be verified) or by pharmacy checks or whatever. And he also can say how much water he drank.

So at the end we have required concentration of TMZ that has to be in that water. If that is possible to achieve f.e. by taking broken pill in the mouth and taking specified amount of sips from that glass, I can believe her. Quite low chances that all numbers fit just randomly.