Sun Yang loses final appeal over doping ban
Sun Yang celebrates after winning the 400m freestyle at FINA Champions Swim Series event in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, on January 15, 2020.
China's three-time Olympic champion swimmer Sun Yang, who is banned until June 2024, on Friday saw his final appeal against a doping sanction dismissed, the Swiss Federal Court announced.
The punishment handed down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport was "not contrary to the fundamental principles of the legal order," and Sun Yang's right to be heard "had not been violated," the Swiss Court ruled.
CAS banned Sun in June last year for refusing to give a sample to doping inspectors.
At the end of a long-running and controversial case, the Lausanne-based court reduced its original ban of eight years after Sun, 30, appealed to Switzerland's federal court over alleged bias.
The new ban of four years and three months, backdated to February 2020, ruled the 1,500m freestyle world record-holder out of the Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Asian Games in his home city of Hangzhou.
Sun, who was banned for three months in 2014 for a separate doping offence, will be eligible to return in time for the Paris 2024 Games, although he will be 32 by then.
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