Olympic bronze medalist figure skater Carolina Kostner received a 16-month ban from competition for assisting then-boyfriend and Olympic race walking champion Alex Schwazer in covering up his doping.
Kostner is appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport after the Italian anti-doping tribunal decision, according to Gazzetta dello Sport.
Kostner, 27, admitted she lied to drug testers who showed up at her home in 2012, looking for Schwazer in order to perform a drug test. She lied and told them that Schwazer was not in her home but claims she didn’t know he was using performance-enhancing drugs.
“I had just a few seconds to decide what to do,” Kostner told an Italian newspaper in December, according to The Associated Press. “I lied on his request. But I never — never — covered for him, because I had no idea what he was doing.”
Kostner, the reigning Olympic and World bronze medalist, said before she became involved in the Schwazer investigation that she would take the 2014-15 season off. Her ban was not backdated.
In Sochi, she became the second oldest women’s figure skating medalist since 1928, according to sports-reference.com. She also won bronze at the World Championships in March, her sixth career Worlds medal.
The 2008 Olympic champion Schwazer tested positive for EPO in 2012, was excluded from the London Olympics and banned for four years.