Russia's Valieva loses neutral athlete status

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva will not be able to compete internationally after the sport's governing body revoked her neutral athlete status.

The 20-year-old returned to the ice in January after serving a four-year doping ban but remained ineligible for this year's Milan-Cortina Olympics.

Russian athletes have been barred from competing under their national flag since the country's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, although International Skating Union rules allow for Russians to compete as neutral athletes.

According to those rules, an individual is presumed eligible unless the ISU determines they are in active military/security service for Russia or Belarus, have taken part in military operations against Ukraine or have "publicly supported that war".

The ISU initially granted Valieva neutral status for the 2026-27 season but that has now been refused, alongside Russian men's skater Mark Kondratiuk, a team-mate of Valieva's at the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The ISU would not give specific details as to why Valieva's status was revoked other than to say in a statement: "The ISU has determined that Mark Kondratiuk and Kamila Valieva no longer satisfy the requirements to participate as Individual Neutral Athletes."

A video from the opening ceremony of a Future Games event in 2024, featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin and Valieva, is pinned to her Instagram account.

And this year she began training at the skating school of Tatiana Navka, who is the wife of Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary. Valieva has also starred in ice shows produced by Navka.

Valieva was 15 when she helped Russia win team gold in Beijing, becoming the first female skater to land a quadruple jump during the Olympics.

But shortly afterwards it emerged that she had tested positive for heart medication trimetazidine - classed as a performance-enhancing drug - six weeks earlier.

A Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) investigation concluded Valieva bore "no fault or negligence" for the violation, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) upheld an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).

Valieva and her team-mates were stripped of gold, with her ban backdated to when she tested positive in December 2021.