Opinion | Sun Yang’s anti-doping charges should be thrown out: the case closed on the night bumbling testers failed to show credentials
- Fina and China anti-doping rules say each member of the collecting team must show ID proof; only one of the three in Sun’s case was able to do so
- ‘Wada should drop [the case] because it’s expensive and they should lose on the merits of the case,’ investigative journalist Rick Sterling says
The Swiss Federal Tribunal was wrong to send Sun Yang’s doping case back to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It should have dismissed the initial CAS ruling altogether, cleared Sun of wrongdoing and ordered damages to be paid to the Chinese swimmer by bodies that were shoddy in interpreting the evidence and personalities quick to humiliate him in public because they “know” he was guilty.
It may be that such a call was not within the powers of Switzerland’s highest court, which targeted CAS chair judge Franco Frattini – the former Italian foreign minister – as being biased because of his history of posting anti-Chinese comments on social media in relation to the treatment of animals by some people in China.
Frattini’s tweets in 2018 and 2019 is merely a thin coat covering deeper layers of impartiality that infect organisations empowered to change people’s lives on a whim.
However, even without the racism factor, the Swiss judges must be asking themselves how the case even progressed that far and why the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) – which contested swimming governing body Fina’s initial ruling to simply warn Sun – failed to expound on the evidence according to entrenched rules.
Tracking back to the incident that sparked off the controversy, the fact remains that when dope testers arrived at Sun’s home in Hangzhou on the night of September 4, 2018 two of the three collectors failed to produce the identity documents required under Fina and Chinese Anti-Doping Agency regulations. Case closed there and then. However, CAS, in its ruling, said the single genuine ID sufficed for the whole team, going against established laws. Sun had been tested enough times in his career to know the procedure. According to an article by investigative journalist Rick Sterling, Sun was tested on August 15, 19, 20, 21 and 24, 2018 plus again on September 28 with no issues.
