Global Athlete Statement on Kamila Valieva

Global Athlete Statement on Kamila Valieva

11 February 2022: There are three organizations to blame for Kamila Valieva's positive test: the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

By refusing to impose a full four-year ban on Russia for implementing the most egregious state-sponsored doping scheme in a generation, international administrators tacitly approved a culture of doping in Russia. Russian athletes, including Valieva, are paying the price for the failures of the global sport bureaucracy.

Every whistleblower, former doper, and current athlete we talk to tells us the same story – Russian athletes have no choice but to conform to the system. They either fall in line or they’re out of sport. Falling in line sometimes means doping.

Valieva's positive test shows the severe ramifications of the international community’s failure to hold  Russia accountable – a fifteen-year-old athlete testing positive for a potentially harmful prohibited substance.

By implicitly approving Russian doping, WADA, the IOC, and CAS have put every Russian athlete at risk and have undermined clean sport globally. As an athlete organization, we of course want athletes to compete, but not under the status quo. Athletes in Russia deserve cultural change; they deserve the right to compete clean. These sport leaders have failed to give them that opportunity.

Today is another sad day for clean and ethical sport, and athletes continue to suffer because of a broken system. For years, athletes have been calling for reform of WADA and accountability for the IOC. These calls continue to be ignored, and the integrity of sport is suffering as a result.

-ENDS -