The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has reduced the 18-month doping ban that was imposed upon Jamaican sprinters Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson to six months.
Last spring, Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) handed down its original suspension for testing positive for the stimulant Oxilofrine during the national championships in June 2013. The suspension was viewed by Powell and Simpson as overly harsh for “a first-time positive test result.”
While overturning that decision, CAS also required JADCO to pay the sprinters’ legal fees.
Their attorney, Paul Greene of Global Sports Advocates LLC, said the “historic cost” that JADCO will be required to pay “is a sign from the CAS that JADCO’s failures in handling their cases are unacceptable.”
He added that he was “elated by the results,” but added that he “knew all along this is the sanction the case law interpreting the World Anti-Doping Code demanded.
“The Code requires that sanctions for athletes be harmonized in light of their degree of fault,” said Greene, who has an exemplary track record at the CAS representing athletes. “Asafa and Sherone’s degree of fault, when compared to the athletes sanctioned before them, was at the low end of the 0-24 month range, under Article 10.4 of the Code.”
The athletes went before the panel July 7 and 8 in New York.
“I never felt that I should not have received a sanction,” said Powell in a statement. “However, I always felt that the 18 months was not in line with a first-time positive test result, and it being proven it came from a tainted supplement.”
“I feel total relief, and that we have finally been vindicated. We both knew that we had done all we could to ensure the supplement was OK before taking it … our actions were not intentional, and CAS has recognized that. I am truly thankful,” Simpson said.
This wasn’t the first controversy involving JADCO. Earlier this year, CAS cleared Veronica Campbell-Brown, another Jamaican sprinter, of doping because of flaws in the test collection procedures in Jamaica and possible contamination of her urine sample.
A Jamaican panel had ruled that Campbell-Brown be suspended for two years before CAS cleared her.
