Pop violinist Vanessa-Mae was banned from competitive skiing for four years on Tuesday for taking part in races that were fixed to allow her to qualify for the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The findings by the International Ski Federation exposed as a sham what many fans thought was a feel-good celebrity Olympic story.
FIS also banned five officials from Slovenia and Italy for between one and two years for their role in the scandal.
“Those who have been sanctioned have been sanctioned for good reason,” FIS President Gian Franco Kasper told The Associated Press. “At first we were laughing when we heard it. But then we realised it’s quite a serious thing.”
FIS said its hearing panel “found to its comfortable satisfaction” that the status of four women’s giant slalom races were manipulated in January in Slovenia, a few weeks before the games.
FIS detailed several rule-breaking incidents that rigged results to help Vanessa Mae falsely improve her results near the OIympic entry deadline.
Without the cheating orchestrated by her managers, Vanessa-Mae “would not have achieved the necessary FIS point performance level to be eligible to participate in the Olympic Winter Games,” the governing body said.
In February at the Sochi Games, the celebrity musician who was raised in Britain raced for Thailand as Vanessa Vanakorn, using the last name of her Thai father. She finished last of 67 racers in the two-run giant slalom.
Vanessa-Mae can appeal the rulings to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“But it doesn’t make much difference for her,” Kasper said. “She was racing (the Olympics) probably only once and that’s all. But in any case we prevented her from being at the next Olympics.”
The next Winter Games are in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
FIS said it informed the International Olympic Committee, which can disqualify Vanessa-Mae from the Sochi Olympics.
IOC President Thomas Bach was photographed with the celebrity athlete in Sochi and later appointed her to a working group meeting helping shape future policy for the Olympic movement.
FIS said the scam involved falsely inflating the quality of four qualifying races to artificially boost Vanessa-Mae’s standing as a potential Olympian.
Race rigging included inventing times for skiers who did not race and faking times for lower-quality skiers who did finish.
“A previously retired competitor with the best FIS points in the competition took part for the sole purpose of lowering the penalty to benefit the participants in the races,” FIS said.
Race officials also broke rules by not changing the course design between the first and second runs, and allowing skiers to continue in poor weather which required abandonment.
“The competitions were organised at the request of the management of Vanessa Vanankorn, through the Thai Olympic Committee in its capacity as the FIS member National Ski Association,” skiing’s governing body said.
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