Darya Klishina, who competes in the long jump, was cleared by an appeals court Monday, allowing her to compete as the sole representative of Russia’s Track and Field team.
Klishina was banned Saturday by the International Association of Athletics Federations, just four days prior to her competing in Tuesday’s event. Past urine samples of were found to not only have “suspicious scratches” on the vial, but also contained the DNA of another person.
Klishina appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport — an independent institution that helps settle “sports-related disputes” — and ultimately had the decision overturned, The New York Times reports
“I am falling victim to those who created a system of manipulating our beautiful sport and is guilty of using it for political purposes,” Klishina wrote on her Facebook Saturday. “I am a clean athlete and have proved that already many times and beyond any doubt.”
Perhaps playing in her favor, Klishina had not been training in Russia, where state officials had routinely tried to cheat the system, instead she had spent the last three years training in Florida.
More than 100 Russian Olympians were banned from the games after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) uncovered a massive, state-sponsored cheating scandal. WADA president Craig Reedie described it as a “culture of cheating in Russian sport.”
Even the Russian Paralympian fell victim to the scandal, when the entire team was outright banned from competition in the Paralympics after the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) found evidence of “sample swapping,” where dirty urine is swapped out for clean.
“The anti-doping system in Russia is broken, corrupted and entirely compromised,” IPC President Philip Craven recently told the AP.
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