The teenage Russian phenom glided across the ice and thrust herself into figure skating history. Leaping and spinning at high speed on Monday night, Kamila Valieva became the first female figure skater to complete a quad — a jump with four rotations — at the Olympics.

But if the systems in place to root out doping in global sports had worked correctly, she would not have been on the ice at all.

In December, Valieva, 15, had submitted a routine doping sample that a laboratory later determined included a banned drug. The results of the test were not returned for more than six weeks, though, and delivered only after Valieva had competed at the Beijing Olympics. This created an embarrassing spectacle in which a skater from a nation serving a multiyear doping ban for running a huge, state-sponsored doping scheme at a previous Olympics was allowed to compete on her sport’s biggest stage, only to be suspended the next day.

Russia’s antidoping agency released a statement on Friday that confirmed key dates in the matter, but did little to quiet the crisis that now hovers over the Olympic skating competitions. Referring to Valieva only as “Athlete” because she is a minor, it said her disputed test had been collected at the Russian skating championships on Dec. 25 and sent for analysis to a Swedish laboratory accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The Russian agency said it only learned of the positive result on Monday, a delay that appeared to be in violation of current antidoping standards, which require test samples to be returned within 20 calendar days. Many countries, seeking to confirm the eligibility of their athletes ahead of major competitions like the Olympics, often press for expedited results that are delivered even faster, some in as little as 48 to 72 hours. Russia’s antidoping agency waited for more than a month.

That delay has left Valieva, four days after her performances lifted Russia to first place in the team competition, at the center of a growing doping controversy that threatens to overshadow the showpiece event of a Winter Olympics that were making her a household name. Her positive test result has put her gold medal (and those of her teammates) in doubt, and even prevented skaters from the United States, which won the silver, and Japan, which took the bronze, from collecting their own.

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Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Antidoping Agency, labeled the entire situation a “catastrophic failure.”

“It’s either an intentional delay to allow her to compete or gross incompetence and has resulted in mayhem and Russia again tainting a major competition,” Tygart said in a phone interview.

On the same day Valieva took her star turn in leading Russia to the gold medal in the team competition, the country’s antidoping agency received word from a Swedish doping lab that a sample provided by Valieva in December had returned a positive test for a banned heart medication, trimetazidine. The drug is believed to improve endurance by helping the heart work more efficiently, though expert opinions diverge on its potential effectiveness as a performance enhancer.

Russia’s antidoping agency said Friday that the coronavirus pandemic had contributed to the delay in its learning of the positive result. According to the agency, called RUSADA, “the delay in analysis and reporting by the Laboratory was caused by another wave of Covid-19, an increase in illness among Laboratory staff and quarantine rules.”

A spokesman for the Karolinska University Hospital, where the laboratory is based, refused to discuss the case.

Valieva was suspended by RUSADA on Tuesday, shortly before the medals in the team event were to be awarded. But she was quickly reinstated by the agency the next day, a decision global antidoping officials have vowed to appeal. Olympic officials have no timetable for a resolution of her case, or even a ruling on her eligibility for the rest of the Games. The outcome of the team event — and the eventual recipients of the team golds — may not be clear for weeks, or even months.

First, though, an emergency legal battle will decide if Valieva can even continue at the Games, where she is — for now — favored to win the women’s singles competition next week. The World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union, the sport’s global governing body, said Friday that they would join the International Olympic Committee in moving to disqualify Valieva from competing.

All the while, there were no answers to questions about how the opaque antidoping systems in place to keep banned drugs out of global sports could have failed so badly, and at such an uncomfortably public moment. Or how an athlete from a nation still under sanctions for orchestrating the most-elaborate doping scandal in history — which corrupted competitions at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games in Russia — did not receive the scrutiny promised by Olympic officials and the world’s antidoping watchdogs.

Though there have been close calls, Valieva’s case is without recent precedent. Athletes have been withdrawn before from major events — even the Olympics — after failing pre-competition tests. But few, if any, have gone on to participate, as Valieva did, so long after they should have been informed they were ineligible.

That Valieva’s sample was submitted for testing on Dec. 25 makes the delay more curious. Most major national antidoping agencies look to confirm the status of pending tests before their Olympic rosters are named, said Hans Geyer of the Institute of Biochemistry-German Sport University Cologne, which is accredited by WADA to analyze doping samples.

According to the latest regulations, Geyer said, results of samples sent to laboratories like his have to be returned within 20 calendar days, with any potential delay required to be flagged to the testing authority.

Geyer said it is also common for antidoping agencies to request expedited analysis ahead of major events. “We try to fulfill this requirement so there are 48 hours, 72 hours analysis and so on,” he said.

Tygart, the U.S. antidoping chief, said the crisis would have been easily avoided if Russia’s antidoping agency acted with the urgency required. “Our staff stays up night and day checking to see what’s been reported,” Tygart said. “We call the lab if we need to.”

Valieva’s profile, and the looming Olympics, should only have increased that sense of urgency for Russia, he said. “If it’s a Wheaties box athlete like she is, you’re going to make sure everything is buttoned up before they go,” Tygart added.

The controversy threatens to further undermine confidence in the global antidoping system, particularly when it comes to Russia, which is serving the final year of a ban from global sports related to a state-sponsored doping scandal that corrupted events at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. The Court of Arbitration for Sport, the body that will hear the appeal against Russia’s decision to reinstate Valieva, already had watered down the punishment meted out to Russia for its attempts to cover up the scale of its cheating scheme.

More than 200 Russian athletes are taking part in the Beijing Games under the banner of the R.O.C., an acronym for the Russian Olympic Committee, because they are forbidden to compete under their nation’s flag or name as part of the ban.

The Russian athletes have been allowed to participate under special permission, and only if the governing bodies for their individual sports affirm they are “clean” of banned substances. Russia’s past actions also have led to Russian athletes being specifically targeted for enhanced testing, according to WADA, and the Independent Testing Agency, the group responsible for the antidoping program in Beijing. Yet there remains little public clarity about what that means.

For instance, it is unclear which Russian athletes faced targeted testing, or even if Valieva was tested en route to her gold medal at January’s European Figure Skating Championships in Estonia. The International Skating Union has provided no details of its testing procedures at that event, and it has offered no comment on the Valieva case beyond a brief statement that it would seek to reinstate Valieva’s provisional suspension.

That an athlete of Valieva’s pedigree was able to travel to and compete in the Games before the results of a weeks-old sample had been analyzed and reported, however, undercut the efficacy of the IT.A.’s claims that it is able to conduct “a systematic risk assessment on potentially participating athletes from all sports.”

Matthew Futterman contributed reporting from Beijing.