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FINA VP Matt Dunn: Option to Strip Sun Yang’s Medals ‘Open’ After His Appeal

FINA vice president and Australian Olympian Matt Dunn said that the organization could challenge the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision not to strip Sun Yang of recent medals in light of his eight-year ban from the sport for an anti-doping rules violation.

In its statement released after the decision, FINA noted that it “noted CAS’s provisions with regard to the modification of competition results.” Since then, a number of international swimmers – perhaps most prominently, South African Chad le Clos – have questioned the decision not to vacate Sun’s results.

Additionally, the Australian Swimming Coaches and Teachers Association released a statement calling for the removal of his medals from the 2019 FINA World Championships. The organization is primarily concerned for Mack Horton

“The Australian Swimming Coaches and Teachers Association (ASCTA) had today accused banned Chinese drug cheat Sun Yang and Swimming’s world governing body FINA of ‘stealing the dreams’ of swimmers and coaches worldwide for not already stripping Sun of his 2019 World Championships gold medals,” the statement said.

“FINA must reconsider the decision handed down by WADA not to reverse Sun’s World Championships results and forget about the ‘legal loop hole’ they are talking about and do what is right by athletes.” Note that the decision was made by CAS and not WADA, as the statement suggests.

Dunn said he “believed removing Sun’s world championship medals would be considered by FINA,” but not until after Sun’s appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal is complete.

“I think the option [of stripping Sun of his medals] will be open. We supported the judgment of the FINA doping panel, and consequently we support the decision of the CAS. Really we wean to ensure the WADA code is enforced as best we can in order to ensure a drug-free playing field for clean athletes,” Dunn told The Sydney Morning Herald.

“From FINA’s perspective the importance is to have a drug-free sport. As an ex-member of the WADA athlete committee I’m very committed to that. We have to ensure our procedures are as robust as possible to ensure our sport is clean and all athletes are protected.”

Shortly after last week’s landmark decision, Sun said he would ‘definitely’ appeal the outcome to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, and his lawyer claimed that CAS “listened to all lies” in making its decision.

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kymopien
4 years ago

They can’t come up with evidence.They did this for Horton because without sun he will win Tokyo Olympic games:)

The unoriginal Tim
4 years ago

People need to lay off Sun. He hasn’t been caught using drugs so why strip medals

Non Bureau Puppet
4 years ago

The Dunn statement is nothing more than window dressing. Grandfather will not allow this treatment to occur. Get rid of the Bureau and start again. The gravy train has been too good for most of them and Dunn is no more than a feather duster in the scheme of things. Good on the coaches for rightly pointing out the lack of spine from Swimming Australia as well.

Olympian
4 years ago

Omg… the guy is already crucified, at least let him “die” in piece…

D2 American
4 years ago

Strip em. Cheater

IM FAN
4 years ago

Or you know, seeing as the incident in question took place 8 months before the last world championships, you could’ve just not let him compete in the first place…

Texas Tap Water
Reply to  IM FAN
4 years ago

Because FINA was too scared of Winnie the Pooh

Sun Yangs Hammer
4 years ago

Can get your medals taken away if you smash them with a hammer

Swimmer
4 years ago

he isn’t serving his ban for drug doping it is for a procedural issue, everyone needs to stop making the false accusation that he was using drugs which helped him swim there is no proof of that and that is not why he is banned currently

Sqimgod
Reply to  Swimmer
4 years ago

It’s possible that sun did use drugs but
A: if he did it probably didn’t help much(at most 1%) drugs only help u recover from training faster(technique and training is why he won)
B: a good portion of swim swammers believe sun is the only drug user in the sport so he must be bashed
C: in reality many other top level swimmers use drugs but haven’t been caught (same as every other sport)

Todd Kramer
Reply to  Sqimgod
4 years ago

To respond to your first point, claiming that drugs only help you recover from training, and then going on to state that training is why he won(along with technique), if drugs help you recover from training, then they allow you to train at a higher level for longer amounts of time, then emphatically YES, drugs helped him a ton. That’s primarily the reason that most take the PEDs, to be able to train at a higher level for longer amounts of time since they can recover faster from said training. It’s a significant advantage. Dude’s a cheat, and deserves this ban and should also have his results voided.

Texas Tap Water
Reply to  Swimmer
4 years ago

Sun was using banned drugs in his first ban in 2014, which Fina didn’t announce and was only for 3 months, allowing Sun Yang to swim in 2014 Asian Games

The unoriginal Tim
Reply to  Texas Tap Water
4 years ago

In 2014 he was using drugs that had only recently been banned

Reply to  The unoriginal Tim
4 years ago

For the record, he did test positive in 2014.

About Torrey Hart

Torrey Hart

Torrey is from Oakland, CA, and majored in media studies and American studies at Claremont McKenna College, where she swam distance freestyle for the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team. Outside of SwimSwam, she has bylines at Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, and The Student Life newspaper.

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