June 30, (THEWILL) – The Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) has upheld the two-year ban slammed on women’s 400 metres world champion Salwa Eid Naser. The decision effectively rules Naser out of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan next month, and the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, next year.
The case was brought before CAS against an earlier decision which cleared the Bahraini athlete of previous charges. Naser had initially escaped a two-year ban for missing three anti-doping tests in a 12-month period, plus a filing error in that window.
This came about as an Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) Disciplinary Tribunal dismissed one of the missed tests because the drug tester had knocked on a cupboard door rather than the door to Naser’s apartment, which was a flimsy rationale.
In addition to that, there was a backdating of the filing error to the start in the first quarter of 2019, even when all this happened on March 16 of that year. What this implied was that it allowed a filing that seemed as though the three remaining failures were not in a 12-month stretch.
To set the records straight, the AIU and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed the decision that cleared her before CAS and the court, which remains the final arbiter in resolving legal disputes in the field of sports, ruled in their favour, pronouncing Naser guilty of an anti-doping rule violation.
The CAS ruling effective from Wednesday, June 30 bans the 23-year-old, who was born in Nigeria but runs for Bahrain, for two years although 95 days have been taken off the sanction. Those days account for the period where Naser was provisionally suspended. All considered, the athlete can return to competition after March 27 2023, at the earliest.
The consequence of the ban is that all her results from November 25, 2019 onwards have been disqualified as she was not supposed to be competing in the period. CAS is yet to publish the reasoning for its verdict, as is the standard.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
