Sun Yang’s high-profile retrial at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) start tomorrow with the Chinese swimming star’s Tokyo Olympic ambitions and his whole career hanging in the balance.
It is the latest — and perhaps decisive — twist in the triple Olympic champion’s colorful life inside and outside the pool, and the clock is ticking with the Tokyo Games just two months away.
In February last year, the 1500m freestyle world record-holder was banned by Lausanne-based CAS for eight years for refusing to give a sample following an incident in which a member of his entourage smashed a vial containing Sun’s blood when doping inspectors visited his home.
Photo: AFP
Sun, 29, appealed and the Swiss Supreme Court overturned the career-ending punishment in December last year over alleged bias towards the swimmer, who remains a huge star in China.
Sun, who was banned for three months in 2014 for a separate doping offense, has always protested his innocence in the murky events of September 2018.
He said the doping testers were not qualified or authorized.
The new hearing would be held over video and is scheduled to last from tomorrow to Thursday.
A decision would be announced “at a later date,” CAS said.
Sun is the reigning 200m freestyle Olympic champion, as well as an 11-time world champion, and is feted at home for his success and perceived good looks.
However, long-simmering antipathy toward him from some of his rivals burst out into the open at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics when Australian Mack Horton said that Sun was a “drug cheat” before pipping him to gold in the 400m freestyle.
He hit back to win the 200m, but not before French swimmer Camille Lacourt caused another storm by saying, in a nod to Sun’s 2014 doping ban: “Sun Yang pisses purple.”
At an ill-tempered 2019 World Aquatics Championships, Horton refused to pose for pictures with Sun on the medal podium, a protest repeated by Britain’s Duncan Scott.
That enraged Sun, who shouted: “I win, you loser” at Scott, in angry scenes rarely seen in swimming.
Sun announced himself to the wider public at the world championships in Shanghai in 2011. Aged 19, he shattered Grant Hackett’s long-standing 1500m freestyle world record and also won the 800m.
He grabbed two more golds at the London 2012 Olympics, again setting a new mark in the 1500m — a record that still stands.
Then came the first in a long list of flashpoints. In 2013, Sun fell out with long-time coach Zhu Zhigen after a row over the swimmer’s romantic ties with a flight attendant.
Months later, Sun, driving without a license, slammed a borrowed Porsche sports utility vehicle into a bus in his home city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai. He spent seven days in police detention and later vowed to mend his ways.
At the 2014 Asian Games, Sun was at the center of controversy again, describing the national anthem of Japan, China’s archrivals, as “ugly” after losing to Kosuke Hagino in the 200m freestyle.
In November 2014 came the bombshell announcement that Sun had served a three-month suspension earlier that year for taking a banned stimulant.
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