Cesar Cielo’s doping case continues to overshadow the preparations of other athletes a day before the opening of the world swimming championships.
Cielo’s case will be heard next Wednesday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), four days before the swimming portion of the championships open.
The worlds open with the women’s 3m synchro and men’s 1m springboard diving preliminaries today.
Swimming’s governing body FINA challenged a Brazilian federation decision to give Cielo and three teammates only a warning after he tested positive in May for furosemide, a banned diuretic, blaming it on a contaminated batch of a food supplement Cielo regularly used.
The CAS hearing will be held in Shanghai.
“We made the appeal because the information was incomplete,” FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu said yesterday, indicating that Cielo’s explanation needs to be examined more thoroughly.
Cielo swept the signature sprinting events — the 50m and 100m freestyle — at the last worlds in Rome two years ago. He also took gold in the 50m freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Cielo could face a ban of two years under World Anti-Doping Agency rules. If he’s banned for more than six months, the Brazilian could be excluded from defending his Olympic title at next year’s London Games under existing International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules.
Marculescu wouldn’t say what type of decision would satisfy FINA.
“It’s not about what we want. It’s a juridical issue that depends on the laws,” Marculescu said. “We just want what’s right.”
At the CAS hearing in Shanghai, Cielo will be represented by Los Angeles attorney Howard Jacobs, while FINA is flying in from Switzerland its lawyer specializing in doping cases, Jean-Pierre Morand.
Jacobs previously represented American swimmer Jessica Hardy in a similar case.
Hardy withdrew from the US team ahead of the Beijing Games and was later ordered to serve a one-year ban, despite the CAS accepting that she was not at fault for a contaminated dietary supplement.
Meanwhile, Brazilian swimming federation president Nunes Filho is staying silent.
“After the [decision] I’ll talk with the press,” Filho said. “Please respect that.”
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later