A reporter had asked IOC member Denis Oswald if the committee was aware of the claim given by the 15-year-old Valieva to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency earlier this month about the positive result. Oswald answered that “[h]er argument was this contamination which happened with a product her grandfather was taking.”
Last week, it was revealed that Valieva tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine in December. On Monday, Olympic officials announced she would be allowed to continue competing at the Beijing Games but any medals she might win would be withheld until her doping case is resolved.
The Dossier Center, a Russian opposition website, reported it obtained audio of Valieva’s hearing. It wrote her attorney, Anna Kozmenko, offered a scenario of how trimetazidine, a heart medication, got into the skater’s system. The lawyer allegedly said: “For example, (her) grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in (and) this glass was somehow later used by the athlete.”
“This is a tablet,” Oliver Catlin, president of the Banned Substances Control Group (BSCG), told Newsweek. “So unless he [Valieva’s grandfather] crushed it and put it in water, that explanation holds very little water.”
Catlin is a leading expert on the field of drug testing in sports, and he co-founded the international third-party certification and testing provider BSCG nearly 20 years ago.
“Trimetazidine is a drug that typically comes in capsules. The grandfather would be taking the capsules out of his hands, not putting it into a glass of water,” Catlin told Newsweek. “Maybe it could get into somebody’s system if it was in the glass, but a tablet doesn’t really speak to that kind of thing happening, since you’re ingesting it without putting it into a glass.”
He continued, “If you were talking about something like a powder that was mixed into glass, then maybe you could reach for that kind of an explanation, but it doesn’t make as much sense when you’re talking about a capsule or a tablet.”
Kozmenko also reportedly offered another scenario, saying the medication may have been laid down on a surface by Valieva’s grandfather and “traces remained” that the athlete could have somehow unknowingly consumed. When asked about that possibility, Catlin again sounded skeptical.
“Even if you were to lay some pills out on a surface, if someone was to come by later and put their hands on that surface, I would say it’s extremely unlikely that you would transfer enough of a substance for it to show up on a drug test,” he said.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that a document filed in Valieva’s arbitration hearing on Sunday allegedly showed she had three different substances in her system that are used to treat heart conditions. The only banned drug was trimetazidine, the paper wrote, but it noted the combination of all three medications could have been taken to increase endurance and provide greater oxygen efficiency.
“I think the general population, who sort of evaluates these things, will look at a 15-year-old and certainly wonder why one heart medication much less three would be required for treatment at this point,” Catlin said of the report that Valieva had the medications hypoxen and L-Carnatine in her system in addition to trimetazidine.
Catlin pointed out a 2021 study showed trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, including trimetazidine, had been found in treated wastewater samples in Poland. Also, he said a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency presentation demonstrated such drugs could contaminate crops irrigated with treated wastewater.
“I did work on a kissing case with a U.S. sprinter not too long ago,” Catlin added. “He won his case. The athlete’s girlfriend was using the drug in question, but she didn’t like taking capsules. So she poured it out on her tongue, and then they were profusely kissing. That was the argument he made as to how it could get transferred into his system.”
Valieva’s grandfather defense seems like a much bigger stretch, though, Catlin said.
“In this case, if you have such little residue, either on a countertop or in a glass, I would have to think that it’s extremely unlikely that it would lead to any significant amount being ingested that would be found on our drug tests,” he said.
