CHINESE SWIMMER SUN Yang will miss the Tokyo Olympics after the Court of Arbitration for Sport handed him a ban of four years and three months for violating anti-doping rules.
Cas, which came to the decision on Tuesday after a high-profile three-day retrial, said the suspension was backdated to February 28, 2020.
The 1500m freestyle world record-holder appeared to have no hope of making it to the Olympics after the Lausanne-based Cas banned him for eight years in February last year for refusing to give a sample following an incident in which a member of his entourage smashed a vial containing Sun’s blood when doping inspectors visited his home.
However, the 29-year-old Sun appealed and Switzerland’s federal supreme court overturned the career-ending punishment last December over alleged bias against the swimmer, who remains a huge star in China.
Sun, who was banned for three months in 2014 for a separate doping offence, has always protested his innocence in the murky events of September 2018.
The reigning 200m freestyle Olympic champion, as well as an 11-time world champion, says the doping testers were not qualified or authorised.
But Cas said a new panel, installed after the Swiss federal decision, “found to its comfortable satisfaction” that Sun had “acted recklessly” and committed two anti-doping rule violations when an unsuccessful attempt was made to collect blood and urine samples at his residence in September 2018.
Sun was found guilty of “evading, refusing or failing to submit to sample collection by an athlete” and “tampering or alleged tampering with any part of doping control by an athlete or other person”.
International swimming federation Fina said it “acknowledges the decision” by Cas.
“Fina will enforce the Cas award according to its terms, and in accordance with its obligations as a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code,” it said.
Wada said it “welcomes” the ban, director general Olivier Niggli saying: “Today’s ruling reconfirms Wada’s position in relation to the original Fina ruling, which was that there were a number of points that were inconsistent with the (anti-doping) code. Today’s Cas ruling validates those concerns.”
The Chinese Swimming Federation had specified that athletes who won at the 2019 world championships in Gwangju would be “automatically qualified” for the July 23-August 8 Tokyo Games.
Sun, who won world titles in the 200m and 400m freestyle, met the criteria and would therefore have qualified for Tokyo if the ban had been overturned.
But those doubts have now been erased. The swimmer’s ban expires just before the start of the 2024 Paris Olympics, when Sun will be 32.
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