ISU defends its decision to give Russians bronze medal from Beijing Olympics after doping case

The governing body that oversees figure skating defended its decision to award the bronze medal from the 2022 Beijing Olympics to the Russian squad Friday, despite the disqualification of team member Kamila Valieva for a highly publicized doping violation that caused a reshuffling of the medals. The International Skating Union published an amended standings late last month, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Valieva was at fault for the violation and banned her for four years. “In any complex and extraordinary situation like this, the reallocation of points could negatively affect the relative team ranking, adversely impacting teams that had nothing to do with the incident in question,” the ISU said in a statement Friday.