Russian skating prodigy Kamila Valieva's failed drug test before her dazzling Winter Games team gold has thrown the 15-year-old's Olympic future into doubt and reawakened global anger over Moscow's doping history.
But the Kremlin - already facing Western diplomatic wrath over a troop build-up near Ukraine - is also defiant in the sporting terrain, calling Valieva's case a "misunderstanding".
"Hold your head up, you're a Russian," government spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged her. "Go proudly and beat everyone."
The teenager became the first woman to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics on Monday, winning a team figure skating gold with the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).
However, the International Testing Agency (ITA) said she had tested positive for banned heart drug Trimetazidine in a urine sample collected by Russian authorities back on December 25 - though confirmation of that only came this week.
Valieva is due to compete again on Tuesday in the women's individual event. By then, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) should have ruled on her case from a closed boardroom on the second floor of a Beijing hotel. She is one of the youngest Olympians ever to test positive.
Many fans and fellow athletes were furious at how Valieva came to have a prohibited drug in her system, blaming coaches, medics and authorities rather than her.
"It is a shame, and the responsible adults should be banned from the sport forever!!!" said German figure-skating great Katarina Witt. "What they knowingly did to her, if true, cannot be surpassed in inhumanity and makes my athlete's heart cry infinitely."
Russian athletes are already competing in Beijing as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) - without their national flag and anthem - due to past sanctions for state-sponsored doping.
The latest controversy blew up after a testing lab in Sweden reported Valieva's sample had been positive - the day after she wowed the world at the Capital Indoor Stadium.
Questions hang over why there was such a delay between her test and the result, which allowed her to travel to Beijing.
Russian Olympic Committee president Stanislav Pozdnyakov said Valieva's test may have been deliberately held back to coincide with the end of the team competition.
The ROC said it was taking comprehensive measures to protect its athletes and to keep a gold medal won "honestly". It said Valieva's tests were negative before and after December 25.
Russia's own anti-doping agency RUSADA imposed a provisional suspension on Valieva after Tuesday's result then lifted it a day after on appeal. On Friday, RUSADA said it was investigating her support team and attributed the delay in results to COVID-19 cases at the Swedish laboratory, TASS news agency reported.
With their reputations for fairness on the line, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) asked CAS to reinstate the suspension.
"We have a 100% policy against doping," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said.
Late on Friday CAS confirmed it had received applications from the IOC and WADA appealing RUSADA's decision to lift the suspension and said a decision will be made in due course.
Reuters
