Finnish biathlete Kaisa Varis won an appeal to overturn her lifetime ban from the sport on Friday even though she tested positive for the banned drug EPO.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that biathlon’s governing body broke anti-doping rules by not giving Varis the chance to be represented when her backup sample was opened.
As a result, “the outcome of the ‘B’ sample testing cannot be accepted as part of the evidence” against Varis, the court said.
The 33-year-old Varis, who had a previous two-year ban for using EPO during her career as a cross-country skier, can now resume competing in biathlon.
After a World Cup event at Oberhof, Germany, in January last year, Varis again tested positive for EPO, an endurance boosting hormone.
Three weeks later, the backup sample also tested positive.
However, Varis had taken up her right under the 2003 edition of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s code and asked that she, or her technical representative, could be present when the second sample was opened.
The code, updated this year, now says an athlete’s written consent is sufficient before testing a “B” sample.
The International Biathlon Union had “failed to make any efforts to reasonably accommodate [Varis’] request,” the CAS said.
The ruling stated that athletes had that right in the 2003 code “even in situations where all of the other evidence” indicated doping.
Varis was a cross-country skier when she tested positive for EPO during the 2003 World Championships at Val di Fiemme, Italy. She later switched sports and took up biathlon.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS