Russians grasping at strawberries

Tainted dessert claim debunked. Canada's medal fight isn't over

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Kamila Valieva received a four-year doping ban - backdated, meaning she will be eligible for the 2026 Winter Games in Milano-Cortina.

Strawberry wields forever...

Piling on the preposterous, the now suspended figure skater Kamila Valieva gave the Court of Arbitration for Sport three (3) possible explanations for how a banned heart drug got into her system during the Russian national championships in St. Petersburg. The positive test result wasn't revealed until after the team event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics some six weeks later.

That would be after Russia won gold on the strength of the teenage phenom's top scores in the short and long program competition.

Though, for the first time in Olympic history, there was no medal presentation and no hardware has been awarded in the two years since.

Gold for Russia was knocked down to bronze under the unfathomable math applied by the International Skating Union - Valieva's scores deleted with the United States elevated to médaille d'or and silver for Japan. Leaving Canada out in the cold, still stuck as fourthplace also-rans.

The tortuous saga has turned into even more of a mess.

It's the strawberries, stupid.

Let's hear the duck 'n' dodge from Valieva as disclosed in the 129page CAS report which appeared online last week - wherein the now 17-year-old puts the blame on grandpa.

Version No. 1: On Dec. 20, 2021, Gennaidy Vasilyevich Solovyov, Valieva's dedushka (not actually a blood grandfather, but the father of her mother's former partner) drove her home from practice in Moscow and they had lunch together. Solovyov gave Valieva a strawberry dessert he'd made.

"Yes we had lunch," Valieva told the CAS.