The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) completed its investigation into figure skater Kamila Valiyeva‘s doping case and in processing the results will hold at least one hearing before an anti-doping disciplinary committee in late September or early October, according to Russian media.
Valiyeva, then 15, was the favorite going into this year’s Olympics and finished fourth after news surfaced of a positive drug test for a banned heart medication from a sample taken on Christmas.
She was allowed to compete after a RUSADA anti-doping disciplinary committee in February lifted her suspension upon appeal by the skater. The committee cited, among other reasons, a “low” amount of the banned substance in Valiyeva’s sample, that she tested negative before and after the Dec. 25 test and that, as an athlete under the age of 16, she had less of a burden of proof.
Anti-doping rules have a provision that athletes under the age of 16 may face lesser punishments for doping violations than those 16 and over, including a reprimand rather than a suspension.
The International Olympic Committee, World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union then appealed RUSADA’s lifting of the suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which ruled that Valiyeva could compete in the Olympics while her case was still being adjudicated.
The CAS panel largely based its decision on an “untenable delay” in Valiyeva’s sample test results being processed through a Stockholm lab. “This case was not about the underlying alleged anti-doping rule violation and the panel takes no position on that,” it stated.
The IOC then put an indefinite delay on holding the medal ceremony from the Olympic team event, where Valiyeva helped the Russian Olympic Committee to win. The U.S. was second and Japan third, but nobody will receive medals until after Valiyeva’s case is adjudicated.
“It continues to be an outrageous situation,” U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland said Thursday. “Our No. 1 priority is to make sure that our Team USA athletes who are sitting without their medals know that we haven’t forgotten them.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency said Thursday that it reserves the right to appeal RUSADA’s verdict on Valiyeva to CAS “if it feels the World Anti-Doping Code has not been applied appropriately.”
“The bad news is there can be hearings, and then of course there can be appeals,” Hirshland said. “I fear that this is going to linger for quite some time.”
Also Thursday, USOPC board chair Susanne Lyons said the IOC is reaching out to its stakeholders, including National Olympic Committees and international sports federations “about whether there’s a pathway back” for Russian athletes who have largely been banned from international competition since shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in February.
“I don’t think any decisions have been made yet, but I think all of us feel that at some point in time, the individual athletes should not be the victim of whatever their individual governments’ political or other tensions are around the world,” Lyons said. “So I think, inevitably, there will be a desire to see athletes who happen to reside in Russia come back and be part of competition, but what the timing is and what that pathway looks like is to be determined.”
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Born 15 days apart in 1984, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge and American Keira D’Amato have shown there are multiple routes to marathon success. Their paths converge somewhat as the top seeds at Sunday’s Berlin Marathon, where Kipchoge might break his world record while D’Amato could lower her American record.
Kipchoge, a 37-year-old who ran a few miles to and from school as a kid, took a more conventional route to 26.2-mile stardom. A standout on the track (world 5000m champion at age 18), he transitioned to the roads after missing Kenya’s Olympic team in 2012.
Over the last decade, he became the unquestioned greatest of all time: wins in 14 of his 16 marathons, the first person to break two hours over the distance (in a non-record-eligible event) and, at his last appearance on the pancake-flat course at the German capital in 2018, took the world record down from 2:02:57 to 2:01:39.
Kipchoge no doubt returned to Berlin — rather than enter November’s New York City Marathon for the first time, which he plans to do in the coming years — because he feels he can bring the record down even further. New York City is too hilly for fast times. The last seven instances the men’s marathon world record has been broken, it has come in Berlin.
In press conferences last Saturday and again on Friday, the philosophical Kipchoge declined to issue a world record-or-bust objective.
“I always say I don’t call a world record, but I aim to run a good race, be it a world record, be it a personal best, be it a good race,” he said. “But let us call it a good race.”
To Kipchoge, a good race isn’t merely about the time or the victory. It is, as has become somewhat of a motto, to inspire people to be active and to show “no human is limited.”
Kipchoge is just as fit as he was when he broke the world record in 2018, said his manager, Valentijn Trouw. The weather, as in 2018, is expected to be ideal for running. He will wear similar, but not the same model, Nike shoes. If anything external can be improved on that special day four years ago, it is the pacemaking, Trouw said.
One thing that is guaranteed to be different this year is Kipchoge’s seed time. Back then, his personal best entering Berlin was 2:03:05. He was a year away from his breaking-two-hours event.
“So he’s a little bit more experienced with running on that kind of pace,” Trouw said.
That Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele ran 2:01:41 in Berlin in 2019 at age 37 — two seconds shy of Kipchoge’s world record — is also a plus. Kipchoge is considered the greatest marathoner in history by a significant margin. If the times back that up, his personal best should be well clear of Bekele, who is arguably the greatest runner in history over all distances as the former world record holder at 5000m and 10,000m.
Bekele is not in Sunday’s field to rival Kipchoge. Other top challengers are racing at next week’s London Marathon, though Ethiopian Guye Adola stands out among Berlin’s supporting cast. In 2017, Adola finished 14 seconds behind Kipchoge in Berlin in his 26.2-mile debut, but did little the next four years before winning Berlin last year in 2:05:45.
Trouw said that he’s had zero conversations with Kipchoge about his remaining shelf life as a marathoner. Haile Gebrselassie, the former world record holder from Ethiopia, earned his last marathon win at 36. Bekele, now 40, hasn’t been within five minutes of that 2:01:41 since he ran it.
“On a bigger scale, the Paris 2024 Olympics is absolutely in the front of his mind,” Trouw said of his client, who can become the first person to win three Olympic marathons. “The World Marathon Majors, he has won four out of six of the races. There are still two races remaining that he hasn’t been yet [Boston and New York City]. So that’s absolutely also one of the targets in the coming years.”
Then there is D’Amato. While Kipchoge built his marathon career, she went nearly a decade between competitive races after a middle-distance stint at American University. She got married, had two kids and worked in real estate before returning to running to lose baby weight.
She has chipped away since finishing the 2017 Shamrock Marathon in the sleet, hail and wind of Virginia Beach in 3:14:54. On Jan. 16, she broke the 16-year-old American women’s marathon record by clocking 2:19:12. That makes her the fastest woman in the Berlin field by personal best times.
No American male or female runner has won Berlin, one of six annual races designated as a World Marathon Major. Like Kipchoge, she entered this race, rather than New York City or even Chicago, to bolster her shot at a fast time.
No active American woman has run within 80 seconds of D’Amato’s national record, but they are accomplished. Sara Hall, the third-fastest American in history, was second in London and third in Chicago the last two years. Molly Seidel took third at the Olympics and fourth in New York City last year. Emily Sisson and Emma Bates are young talents who broke into the U.S. all-time top 10.
Of that group, only D’Amato is running Berlin, the first in a series of four major marathons over the next six weeks.
“There’s a number of American women that I think are also gunning for that record, so if I think if I don’t lower it myself, it’s not going to be mine for very much longer,” she said.
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Dwyane Wade said the new Redeem Team documentary on the 2008 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team “shines a light” on Kobe Bryant, whom Wade called the leader of the team that took gold.
“One of the things that for me that was very important was how we told Kobe Bryant’s story throughout this, in the midst of the team story,” Wade told the audience at a Hollywood film screening Thursday, before it premieres on Netflix on Oct. 7. “To me, that was a very sensitive moment at that time, but a beautiful arc, a beautiful story.”
Wade was part of the U.S. team that took bronze at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the first time a U.S. team of NBA players lost in Olympic play. The Americans, with Wade, also took bronze at the 2006 World Championship.
Then Bryant joined the team for the 2008 Beijing Games and said he valued a gold medal over an NBA title.
“A lot of us know that we lost a couple of years, and our big brother had to come and save us – is probably what Kobe told everybody,” Wade joked to the audience Thursday. “But it was a beautiful journey.”
Wade and LeBron James, another Olympian in 2004 and 2008 (and 2012), are among the film’s executive producers.
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