Kamila Valieva, the teenage Russian figure-skating gold medallist, can contest the women’s individual event at the Beijing Winter Olympics after a tribunal upheld a decision to allow her to compete while appealing a positive doping test result.

The ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Monday was a victory for the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) against the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, and came one day before the beginning of the individual women’s event, in which the 15-year-old Valieva is heavily favoured for gold.

The verdict has set the stage for the most controversial Olympic figure-skating event in 20 years after a judging scandal in 2002 forced an overhaul of the sport. It also added tension to a dispute between the Russian team and the IOC, which banned the nation in 2017 for its state-sponsored doping programme at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.