Sports Law
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Five-time Olympic speedskating champion, Claudia Pechstein, has lost her appeal against a two-year ban for doping, based on blood passport values, and will miss the Vancouver Games.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland, dismissed the German's appeal against a ban imposed by the International Skating Union (ISU). The ban runs until February 2011.
Pechstein has never failed a drug test and denied doping. However, the ISU said she returned blood samples with abnormal levels, based on her historic blood passport values, at the World Allround Championships last season. This is the first such case based on blood passport values.
In ruling on Pechstein's appeal, the three-man CAS Panel did not agree with Pechstein’s contention that the standard of proof must be very close to “proof beyond reasonable doubt” because of the seriousness of the allegation. In the Panel’s view, the seriousness of the allegations put forward by the ISU were “exactly the same seriousness as any other anti-doping case brought before the CAS and involving blood doping; nothing more, nothing less” [at 125].
On this basis, the Panel applied [at 123 – 136] the normal “comfortable satisfaction” standard provided under Artitcle 3.1 of the ISU ADR which states:
“The standard of proof shall be whether the ISU or its Member has established an Anti-Doping rule violation to the comfortable standard of the hearing panel bearing in mind the seriousness of the allegation which is made. This standard of proof in all cases is greater than a mere balance of probability but less than proof beyond reasonable doubt”
This “comfortable satisfaction” test has been applied in many CAS cases concerning allegations of blood manipulation or other serious forms of doping, even prior to the WADA Code.