Russia’s world record shattering figure skater Kamila Valieva was cleared by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to compete in the Olympic Games women’s competition this week.

In issuing its decision Monday (Sunday night PST) a three-member CAS panel rejected requests by the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union, the sport’s worldwide governing body, to reinstate a Russian Anti-Doping Agency provisional suspension of the 15-year-old skater after she tested positive for a banned endurance enhancing drug in December.

CAS cited Valieva’s age, proportionality and irreparable harm and concerns about the notification procedures in the case in ruling that RUSADA made the right decision to lift its own suspension after only a day.

“The Panel determined that permitting the provisional suspension to remain lifted was appropriate,” CAS said in a statement.

Valieva is expected to receive a full hearing on her doping violation after the Games during which she could be stripped of the gold medal she won in the team competition last week and any potential medal she might win the women’s competition.

The controversy surrounding Valieva, the overwhelming favorite to win the women’s event which opens Tuesday has overshadowed the Beijing Games and prompted renewed criticism of the IOC’s decision to allow Russian athletes to compete in the Olympics despite a series of international investigations which revealed the country’s wide-spread state supported doping program.

The decision was immediately criticized by U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland.

“Athletes have the right to know they are competing on a level playing field,” Hirshland said in a statement. “Unfortunately, today that right is being denied. This appears to be another chapter in the systemic and pervasive disregard for clean sport by Russia.”

The ruling follows a nearly six hour hearing Sunday in which the IOC, WADA and ISU asked the CAS panel to reinstate a suspension of Valieva for testing positive for trimetazidine, a drug banned by WADA since 2014 that that increases blood flow to the heart and is usually used to treat angina.

Some anti-doping experts believe trimetazidine could improve an athlete’s endurance, helping them to train longer and in the case of figure skating aiding in attempting quad jumps in the second half of a program, when they are worth more points.

Because of her age, Valieva is a “protected person” under WADA rules.

WADA and RUSADA, the CAS panel said, “are silent with respect to provisionalsuspension imposed on protected persons, while these rules have specific provisions fordifferent standards of evidence and for lower sanctions in the case of protected persons.”

The panel also “considered fundamental principles of fairness, proportionality, irreparable harm, and the relative balance of interests as between the Applicants and the Athlete, who did not test positive during the Olympic Games in Beijing and is still subject to a disciplinary procedure on the merits following the positive anti-doping test undertaken in December2021; in particular, the Panel considered that preventing the Athlete from competing at the Olympic Games would cause her irreparable harm in these circumstances.”

A sample provided by Valieva during a drug test at the Russian Championships on December 25 tested positive for trimetazidine. Valieva won the Russian title with the highest total points score ever recorded (283.48).

But the WADA-accredited Stockholm lab that conducted the test did not inform the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) of the result until February 8, a day after Valieva helped the Russian Olympic Committee squad win the team competition.

“The CAS Panel also emphasized that there were serious issues of untimely notification of the results of the Athlete’s anti-doping test that was performed in December 2021 which impinged upon the Athlete’s ability to establish certain legal requirements for her benefit, while such late notification was not her fault, in the middle of the Olympic Winter GamesBeijing 2022,” CAS said in its statement.

RUSADA placed Valieva on provisional suspension that same day, a sanction that would prevent her from further competing in the Olympic Games. RUSADA lifted the suspension a day later after Valieva formally appealed the sanction.

By then the matter was already an international scandal that began to emerge when the medal ceremony for the team competition scheduled for Feb. 8 was postponed.

WADA said Sunday it would investigate Valieva’s entourage.

Valieva is coached by Eteri Tutberidze, one of the sport’s most polarizing figures. Skaters coached by Tutberidze have dominated women’s skating in recent years, winning three Olympic gold medals, four World titles, five European crowns and five World Junior titles since 2015.

The success of Tutberidze’s skaters has prompted praise, criticism and growing suspicion. Tutberidze’s training methods emphasize skaters working on quad jumps, leaps in which a skater makes four rotations, before they reach puberty. Tutberidze believes the lighter a skater is the easier it is for them to complete a quad jump, an emphasis on weight that critics maintain has led to eating disorders and injuries prematurely ending the careers of several Tutberidze-coached skaters.

Among those in Tutberidze’s entourage is Dr. Filipp Shvetsky, who was reportedly banned from working with Russia’s rowing team following a 2007 doping investigation. Shvetsky has accompanied Valieva to international events this season.

Tuberidze told Russian television over the weekend that she was certain Valieva was “clean and innocent.”

Valieva was born in Kazan in southwest Russia. She was around age 12 when she moved to Moscow in the spring of 2018 to train under Tutberidze at the Sambo-70 club. Only weeks earlier Tutberidze-coached skaters swept the Olympic women’s gold and silver medals.

Valieva won the 2020 World Junior title and then in her international senior debut last fall at the CS Finlandia Trophy set a new world record for total points (249.24). She marked her senior Grand Prix debut at Skate Canada International by setting world records for free skate score (180.89) and total points (265.08).

Making her senior Grand Prix debut at the 2021 Skate Canada International, Valieva won the short program with a new personal best score of 84.19, 2.95 points ahead of Elizaveta Tuktamysheva in second place. In the free skate, she skated a clean program with three quads and only one minor mistake in her triple Axel. Once again, she set a new world record for the women’s free skate (180.89) and total score (265.08).

She raised her world record again at the Rostelecom Cup, another Grand Prix event, finishing with 272.71 point, higher than the score for the men’s event winner.

A report released in November 2015 from a probe led by Richard Pound, the former World Anti-Doping Agency president and the IOC’s longest serving member, outlined “a deeply rooted culture of cheating,” a state-sponsored doping program in which Russian athletes were tipped off about upcoming drug tests, and Russian anti-doping agency employees routinely accepted bribes to cover up positive tests. Moscow drug-testing lab officials admitted to intentionally destroying more than 1,400 drug test samples a few days before a WADA inspection.

Another WADA commissioned report released in 2017 found that Russia’s elaborate state-sponsored doping program involving 1,000 athletes in 30 sports produced at least 27 ill-gotten Olympic medals and undermined the integrity of two Olympic Games and several other major international sports competitions over a four-year period. The inquiry conducted by Canadian attorney Richard McLaren also found that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, the country’s Ministry of Sport, officials for the WADA-accredited Moscow drug testing lab and even the Federal Security Services (FSB) — the successor to the Soviet era KGB — were involved in covering up positive drug tests for Russian athletes and the “manipulation of” drug testing, even tampering with tests for Russian athletes at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi.

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“For years, international sports competitions have unknowingly been hijacked by the Russians.” McLaren said at the time.

The IOC in December 2017 banned Russia from competing in 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea after an IOC investigation confirmed a “widespread culture of doping in Russia.” But the IOC allowed 168 Russian athletes to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” in a move that prompted widespread international criticism.

“You can’t merely wish away the most significant fraud in the history of sport,” the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations wrote the IOC in a letter at the time.

WADA barred Russia from international sports competitions in December 2019 for four years, including the 2020 and 2022 Olympics, citing the state-sponsored doping scheme at the Sochi Games.

CAS reduced the ban to two years in December 2020. Russian athletes represented the Russian Olympic Committee at the Tokyo Olympics last summer as they have in Beijing. The Russian flag was banned and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was played in place of the Russian national anthem at awards ceremony in which Russian athletes won gold medals.