“Hammer Gate”: Mega ban for China’s swimming star

Not only will the 28-year-old Chinese not be allowed to take part in the Olympic Games in Japan next summer, but his active career may also be over with the arbitration decision. Sun had already tested positive for the doping drug trimetazidine in 2014 and was given a three-month ban. However, according to the CAS ruling, the freestyle swimmer was allowed to keep his two gold medals over 200 and 400 m, which he won at the World Championships last summer in Gwangju, South Korea, partly because the world swimming association FINA had avoided bringing charges against Sun. Sample destroyed with the hammer The CAS largely followed the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA's statements from the ten-hour public hearing on November 5, 2019. Sun's side had argued that the unannounced control on the night of September 5 at Sun's property in the Chinese eastern province of Zhejiang, at the end of which there was a blood sample destroyed with a hammer, the three-person control team from the globally operating Swedish anti-doping service provider IDTM did not provide sufficient identification and the test was therefore invalid. Although Sun gave a blood sample, the container was later destroyed with a hammer by Sun's security guard, according to a FINA report. The swimmer himself stood next to it and used the flashlight function on his cell phone to provide light. FINA, which had come under criticism in the past for its lax anti-doping policy, refrained from imposing a penalty for Asia's lead swimmer after a hearing in January 2019. The World Anti-Doping Agency WADA lodged an objection before the CAS.

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“Hammer Gate”: Mega ban for China’s swimming star

No mercy in the “Hammer affair”: The three-time Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang has been banned from doping for eight years by the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) as a repeat offender.

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