[ PHOTO BY BECCA WYANT ]
Sun Yang Ban Reduced, but Three-Time Champion Will Miss Tokyo Olympics Following CAS Retrial BY LIZ BYRNES
S
un Yang will not defend his 200 freestyle title at the Tokyo Olympics after he was banned for four years and three months after a retrial at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The Chinese swimmer had been handed an eight-year suspension in February 2020 which stemmed from an outof-competition test in September 2018 during which a vial of Sun’s blood was smashed with a hammer by a member of his team. There were also allegations of aggression and intimidation of the testers while Sun’s team claimed they didn’t have the correct credentials. Governing body FINA initially ruled that Sun just be issued a caution but an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency was upheld by CAS and the ban imposed. The three-time Olympic champion appealed the verdict to the Swiss Federal Tribunal which ruled that a member of the three-person CAS panel, Franco Frattini, made biased comments on social media and sent the case back to the CAS for retrial. A new panel was formed comprising Dr Hans Nater (Switzerland), President, Prof. Jan Paulsson (France) and Prof. Bernard Hanotiau (Belgium) and the hearing was held in May.
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On Tuesday CAS announced it had lowered the length of the ban but ensured Sun will not defend his title in Tokyo next month. It was backdated to 28 February 2020 meaning he will be free to compete in June 2024, ahead of the Olympics in Paris. Sun will be 32 by then and his intentions are not yet known: the Chinese trials were held in May this year so should it be the same in 2024, he may not even get the chance to qualify for the team. It was Sun’s second doping infraction after he tested positive for the stimulant Trimetazidine in May 2014 for which he was given a three-month penalty with four years imposed for the second offence. The CAS verdict began: “The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has issued a new decision in the appeal arbitration procedure brought by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) against the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang and the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) in relation to the decision issued by the FINA Doping Panel dated 3 January 2019 (the Challenged Decision) whereby Sun Yang was found not to have committed an Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) following an outof-competition doping control.” It continued:
