The top court in sports explains ‘irreparable harm’ decision that allowed Kamila Valieva to compete.

The top court in sports released the full 41-page report supporting its decision that barring Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old star Russian skater who faces a potential disqualification for doping, from the Olympics would have risked causing her “irreparable harm.”

The full details of the decision by the emergency three-person panel from the Court of Arbitration for Sport were published a few hours after Valieva’s stunning downfall in the women’s figure skating free skate competition on Thursday. The International Olympic Committee; the International Skating Union, the sport’s governing body; and the World Anti-Doping Agency had filed an appeal with the court seeking her suspension.

Valieva led the Russian team to victory in the team figure skating event on Feb. 7 before officials confirmed that she had tested positive for a banned substance at the Russian championships in December. That revelation has since convulsed the Beijing Olympics in a doping crisis and has turned Valieva into a lightning rod for the Games’ biggest scandal.

In its report, the court panel said it had decided that Valieva could continue skating at the Olympics because she was not to blame for the delay in providing a conclusive result by the Stockholm laboratory that analyzed her sample. That result came just hours before Valieva took to the ice in Beijing for the first time. The court’s lawyers also said that because Valieva is a minor, they had considered the likelihood that she might eventually face only a reprimand, rather than a suspension, if she was found guilty of a doping violation.

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The panel’s commentary was scathing regarding the 44 days it had taken for the Stockholm laboratory to provide the results, noting that Valieva had tested negative twice since then — on Jan. 13 and Feb. 7 — with those results having arrived in a more timely manner. The Swedish laboratory blamed the delays on staffing shortages related to the coronavirus pandemic.

“None of this is the fault of the athlete, and it has put her in a remarkably difficult position where she faces a lifetime of work being taken from her within days of the biggest event of her short career,” the panel wrote in its 41-page judgment.

Still, the panel’s decision was not a verdict on whether the banned drug trimetazidine, known as TMZ,had entered her system by mistake, as she contends, or was part of a doping scheme.

The court’s report said that Valieva had failed to provide evidence to back up a claim by her mother, and her legal team, that the positive test might have been the result of contamination through sharing of dishes or drinking from the same glass as her grandfather, who reportedly took TMZ after heart replacement surgery. The court panel, the report said, was provided with no proof of purchase, medical records or prescriptions.

Earlier on Thursday, the president of the Russian Olympic Committee said the country would fight any effort to redistribute medals in the team figure skating competition, even if Valieva was eventually disqualified for doping.

The case upended the figure skating event, with the I.O.C. scrapping the medal ceremony for the team competition and declaring that there would not be a podium ceremony for the women’s event should Valieva finish in a medal position. By the time Valieva took the ice for the final time, in a contest she was favored to win, the stress of the past week appeared to have taken its toll.

She faltered badly, slipping to the ice several times, in an error-strewn performance that ended with her dissolving into tears and crashing down to fourth position.

The court panel said Valieva, as well as the other athletes who were affected by the case, were the victims of a failed system.

“Put simply, athletes should not be subject to the risk of serious harm occasioned by antidoping authorities’ failure to function effectively at a high level of performance and in a manner designed to protect the integrity of the operation of the Games,” the panel wrote.