This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The violinist Vanessa-Mae, who made her Olympic debut in Sochi this year at the age of 35, has been banned from competitive skiing for four years for fixing races.

An International Ski Federation hearing panel “found to its comfortable satisfaction that the results of the four ladies’ giant slalom races that took place on 18 and 19 January at Krvavec were manipulated”.

The FIS said that without the manipulation she “would not have achieved the necessary FIS point performance level to be eligible to participate in the Olympic Winter Games”.

In Sochi the musician raced for Thailand as Vanessa Vanakorn, using the last name of her Thai father. She finished last of 67 competitors in the two-run giant slalom.

At the time she called the experience “amazing”, saying: “You’ve got the elite skiers of the world and then you’ve got some mad old woman like me trying to make it down.”

The FIS 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,” the FIS president Gian-Franco Kasper told AP. “At first we were laughing when we heard it. But then we realised it’s quite a serious thing.”

The musician, who has sold 10 million albums worldwide, spent only six months training for the Games and qualified as number 2,253 in the world.

“With my limited experience at my age I’m happy I made it down,” she said. “It was kind of rock and roll because I nearly crashed out three times.”

She can appeal within 21 days against 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.”

Vanessa-Mae in more familiar guise. Photograph: Nick Harvey/REX

The next Winter Games are in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The FIS said it had informed the International Olympic Committee, which can retrospectively disqualify Vanessa-Mae from the Sochi Olympics.

The FIS said the quality of four qualifying races was falsely inflated 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 the benefit the participants in the races,” the 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 Vanakorn, through the Thai Olympic Committee in its capacity as the FIS member National Ski Association,” skiing’s governing body said.

The FIS stated that:

• The results of two giant slalom races on 19 January included a competitor who was not present at, and did not participate in the Krvavec competitions.

• Another competitor was placed second in one race despite the fact she fell. Her time is understood to have been adjusted afterwards by more than 10 seconds.

• At least one competitor started away from the starting gate outside the automatic timing wand that was manually opened by the starter when she was already on the course.

• A previously retired competitor with the best FIS points in the competition took part for the sole purpose of lowering the penalty to the benefit the participants in the races.

• The weather conditions were so bad that no regular race could be held and “any comparable competition in Slovenia would have been cancelled” according to the competition referee.

• The races courses were not changed for the second runs as is required by the FIS rules.

• Approximately 23 competitors participated in the two races held on 18th January 2014, however at least two competitors on the official results were not in attendance.