Sun Yang, Chinese Olympic Swimmer, Gets 8-Year Doping Ban

A panel unanimously found “to its comfortable satisfaction” that Sun had violated rules governing efforts to tamper with doping procedures, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said in a statement.

“The athlete failed to establish that he had a compelling justification to destroy his sample collection containers and forgo the doping control when, in his opinion, the collection protocol was not in compliance,” the court said.

Sun, who contended the testers had been unprofessional and lacked the proper paperwork, received only a warning from a tribunal from FINA, swimming’s governing body. WADA, the antidoping agency, appealed that decision, arguing for stronger penalties.

The court said that while athletes might have grounds to question the accreditation of testing personnel, the destruction of samples — an act that would prevent testing at a later date — in defiance of warnings about the consequences was not acceptable.

The November hearing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Montreux, Switzerland, translation issues marred the proceedings, and a new confrontation erupted — between Sun’s mother and opposing lawyers during cross-examination.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/sports/olympics/sun-yang-doping-ban.html