Questioned by the Sydney Morning Herald on the Jannik Sinner affair while the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and a decision will be rendered in 2025 (not before March), the lawyer of the sport, Tim Fuller, expressed some pessimism regarding the outcome of this appeal.
According to Fuller, who notably represented swimmer Shayna Jack (sentenced to a 24-month ban from competition for having unintentionally ingested Ligandrol), the current world number 1 has a good chance of also being suspended.
“I believe that the decision of absence of fault or negligence will be overturned on appeal and that a sanction will be imposed. I would say this is a very, very unusual case. All the AMA is really doing here is saying that we accept that it was not intentional, but that you bear, or have borne, some degree of fault or negligence for what happened …we are saying that you, as an athlete, bear the ultimate responsibility – which is strict liability – and we are saying, therefore, that you have demonstrated fault and negligence in your actions. And then we're going to look now at what we're saying is between a medium and high level of fault or negligence, and that's why they're asking for a one to two year ban. One year would be considered the upper limit of the low default standard. From zero to 12 [mois] is the range for low default. »
Published on Monday December 2, 2024 at 2:44 p.m.
