Yesterday, Chinese state-run media outlet Xinhua reported that a Swiss Tribunal overturned an eight-year ban on distance swimmer Sun Yang.
As a refresher, multi-Olympic champion Sun was handed an 8-year ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) this past February. The case revolved around an out-of-competition doping control test in which 29-year-old Sun destroyed the samples, claiming that the test-takers were unofficial and improperly identified agents.
Sun had since appealed the 8-year CAS ban to the Tribunal Arbitral du Sport (TAS).
You can read a comprehensive background on the case in our report from yesterday here.
The World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) response to the TAS decision reiterated that “WADA clearly prevailed on the substance of the case as it was able to show that there were a number of aspects of the original FINA decision that were incorrect under the World Anti-Doping Code and the related International Standard for Testing and Investigations”
That statement hinted to the fact that something non-factual was perhaps in play with TAS’ overturning decision, a concept which was indeed brought to light through the Swiss Tribunal’s official decision verbiage.
The Swiss Tribunal’s statement read as follows:
Per The New York Times, the Swiss federal court’s decision came after lawyers for Sun presented evidence that the chairman of the three-member panel that issued Sun’s ban in February, Franco Frattini, had made racist comments about China on social media.
“This yellow face Chinese monster smiling while torturing a small dog, deserves the worst of the hell!!!” the CAS Chair tweeted in 2019 in response to an unverified video of an unknown market seller, per Xinhua.
The year before the Italian tweeted, “Hell forever for those b*****d sadic (sic) Chinese.” (Xinhua)
Wednesday WADA stated, “WADA will take steps to present its case robustly again when the matter returns to the CAS panel, which will be chaired by a different president.”
Frattini was a candidate for NATO. Secretary General . Think about that.
That racist person was a senior Staff in CAS, and his behaviors and views must have been known inside CAS long before Sun Yang’s case. This calls into question the integrity and suitability of CAS as a neutral entity in determining any future disputes.
Think of this way , a black defendant had to stand in front of an all white jury in Deep South in the 50’s…. he was already convicted in their minds even before the trial was started. The burden in now on CAS to prove it’s really a neutral party for any future arbitration case.
This Drug was at WADA’s banning list for a few months then WADA changed their mind again, it was off the list. Make no sense for accusing someone doping…
White peoples are not happy with the fact that an Asian man is a dominant figure in this sport .
Ya know, I’m not a huge Sun Yang fan….but gawd damn what awful remarks and only a year ago. That’s the type of stuff I would only expect to hear from an ignorant truck driver or a US president. Shameful.
Racially biased ban is overturned! Period.
Sun Yang, I’m happy for you! Hope to see you swim at the Olympics next year!
My position is that if the evidence is iffy/borderline and a judge is found to be potentially biased, perhaps you overturn the ban. If the evidence of cheating is strong and convincing, then a couple of dumb comments from a judge should not result in a cheater being let off the hook. I suspect if his case is reviewed again, it will result in another ban.
If you believe that the evidence is “strong and convincing,” then you really weren’t paying attention to the details of the case. I suspect you just heard he went into a rage and smashed a vile of his blood and decided there that you were “strongly convinced” that he was guilty.
I would invite you to read the details. There has been a ton of extensive coverage on this site and elsewhere. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I lived in China, was as wealthy and famous as Sun is there, and people showed up to take my blood without proper credentials, I would’ve set off every alarm possible, suspecting anything from an illicit cloning operation… Read more »
If you’re going to rant about how someone needs to “read the details”, then you better actually get the facts about the case right.
The Lead Doping Control Officer had presented the letter of authority to Sun authorizing the company IDTM to administer the test, and the tester had ID on them showing that they were affiliated with IDTM, satisfying the requirements laid out in the testing protocol.
Sun Yang claimed that a specific letter of authority authorizing the testers by name was required to administer the test, but that was simply not true, and there is no evidence, not even testimony from Sun, that suggests that he had even been shown such a specific letter of authority in any… Read more »
Sun Yang is the Bob Wylie of ‘What about Bob’…
“You think he’s gone! HE’S NEVER GONE!!!” – Dr. Leo Marvin
“YOUR DEATH THERAPY CURED ME, YOU GENIUS!”