Yang banned again, misses Tokyo Games
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, June 23, (AP): Chinese swimmer star Sun Yang was banned for more than four years for breaking anti-doping rules after a retrial at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The court’s verdict ends Sun’s hopes of defending his Olympic title in the 200 meters freestyle in Tokyo next month. The ban is backdated to February 2020, meaning Sun could return for the 2024 Paris Olympics when he would be 32.
The judges found Sun “to have acted recklessly” when he refused to let anti-doping officials leave his home with a sample of his blood.
Sun’s original eight-year ban imposed last year was overturned on appeal to Switzerland’s supreme court which ordered a fresh prosecution.
Federal judges ruled the first guilty verdict unsafe because the chairman of the three-judge panel at CAS showed anti-Chinese bias in social media comments.
The retrial was heard by three new judges by video link over three days last month and fast-tracked ahead of the Tokyo Olympics opening on July 23.
The case was about a failed attempt to take blood and urine from Sun by a sample collection team who made an unannounced visit to his home in China in September 2018.
It turned confrontational and led to Sun’s entourage ordering a security guard to smash the casing of a blood vial with a hammer.
The World Anti-Doping Agency appealed to CAS when a tribunal appointed by swimming’s governing body, FINA, only warned the three-time Olympic champion about his conduct.
WADA requested a ban of two to eight years for a second doping conviction. Sun served a three-month ban in 2014 imposed by Chinese authorities after testing positive for a stimulant that was banned at the time. The ban was not announced until after it ended.
Sun’s second ban was imposed after a rare CAS hearing held in open court and streamed live online. It lasted more than 10 hours in November 2019 at a special court session in Montreux, Switzerland. Sun denied wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Carli Lloyd is headed to her fourth Olympics after all.
The 38-year-old Lloyd had vowed after the 2019 World Cup that she would push to make the team for Tokyo before stepping away from the sport. But then the games were pushed back a year because of the coronavirus, and Lloyd needed surgery on her knee.
So making the 18-player roster was by no means a slam dunk for Lloyd, who scored three goals in the opening 16 minutes of the 2015 World Cup final in Canada.
Vlatko Andonovski announced his Olympic squad on Wednesday.
Tobin Heath joins Lloyd in heading to her fourth Olympics.
At the 2008 Beijing Games, Lloyd scored in overtime for a 1-0 victory against Brazil in the final. Four years later, she scored both goals in the gold-medal match against Japan at Wembley Stadium, becoming the only player to score winning goals in consecutive Olympic finals.
Lloyd, who will turn 39 before the Tokyo Games, is the oldest national team Olympian, besting Christie Rampone, who was 37 when she played at the 2012 London Games.
Heath did not play in the national team’s recent Summer Series in Texas because of a knee injury. Julie Ertz is also recovering from an injury but should be ready when the United States opens the Olympics on July 21 against Sweden.
Becky Sauerbrunn, Kelley O’Hara, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe will be playing in their third Olympics.
Abby Dahlkemper, Tierna Davidson, Emily Sonnett, Rose Lavelle and goalkeeper Adrianna Franch are first-time Olympians, as are sisters Samantha and Kristie Mewis.
Kristie Mewis is the only player on the roster who was not on the 2019 World Cup-winning team. She and Samantha are the first sisters to play for the senior national team in a world championship.
Also
WELLINGTON: Women’s rugby sevens captain Sarah Hirini and twotime Olympic rowing gold medalist Hamish Bond will carry the New Zealand flag at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games.
Hirini was a member of the New Zealand team that won a silver medal at the 2016 Rio de Janiero Games, where rugby sevens made its Olympic debut, and has since led the team to a gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and to the World Sevens Series title last year.
Bond combined with Eric Murray in the coxless pair which was unbeaten over four years and won gold medals at the London and Rio Olympics.
After the 2016 Games, Bond switched to cycling, winning a bronze medal in the road time trial at the Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast and setting a New Zealand record on the track in the 4,000-meters individual pursuit.
He has returned to rowing as a crew member of the New Zealand eight for Tokyo.
The Olympics are set to open on July 23 under heavy restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic.