Wednesday December 23, 2020
Destroyed doping sample
Federal court lifts Yang's hammer lock
The swimming star Sun Yang prevents the evaluation of a doping test in a rustic way: with a hammer. The Chinese will still be banned for a long time. But a long spell is overturned before a Swiss federal court.
According to the World Anti-Doping Agency Wada, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court has granted the appeal of the Chinese swimming star Sun Yang and overturned the judgment of the International Sports Court Cas of February 20. As Wada announced on Wednesday evening, it will take measures "to convincingly present its case again when the matter goes back to the CAS panel". A complete justification from the Federal Supreme Court is not yet available, so no further comments can be made.
Sun Yang was sentenced by the Cas to an eight-year ban at the end of February, which would mean the end of the career of the controversial multiple Olympic and world champion. Sun Yang's lawyers filed an appeal with the Swiss federal court. Sun Yang had already "definitely" announced a complaint after the Cas judgment and claimed: "This is unfair. I firmly believe in my innocence." In the case, it was mainly about a doping sample destroyed with a hammer from the swimming star from autumn 2018; the athlete's environment was directly involved.
The world association Fina initially waived a ban, whereupon the world anti-doping agency Wada called the Cas. Sun Yang had defended the crime by saying that the inspectors could not be sufficiently identified. The Cas decided that this did not give him the right to destroy the sample. Another contributing factor to the maximum sentence was that Sun Yang was a repeat offender. In 2014 he was banned for three months because of doping.
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