How it unfolded
Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) skater Kamila Valieva led after the short program with a near-world-record score, but a doping sample taken before the Games was belatedly confirmed positive for the heart medication trimetazidine, and she was allowed to compete in the free skate only under a provisional ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Skating under extreme pressure, Valieva fell multiple times in the free skate and dropped to fourth, while fellow Russian Anna Shcherbakova landed a quadruple jump to take gold, and Alexandra Trusova took silver with a groundbreaking layout of five quadruple jumps in the free skate, the first woman to do so. The medal ceremony was never held throughout the Games because of the unresolved Valieva case. In January 2024, CAS confirmed a four-year ban for Valieva backdated to December 2021, and the team event gold from the same Games was consequently reassigned from Russia to the United States.
Why it still matters
This case raised the international question of whether a 15-year-old could be subject to adult-level doping sanctions, and became the direct trigger for the ISU's 2022 decision to raise the senior minimum age from 15 to 17. With judgment and medal presentation delayed nearly two years, it remains the largest doping dispute in figure skating history and led to a broader reexamination of a training model built around quadruple jumps optimized for pre-pubescent bodies.