China's Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang banned for eight years

Star swimmer had missed out-of-competition test for doping

FILE - In this Friday, July 26, 2019 file photo, China's Sun Yang waves following the men's 4x200m freestyle relay heats at the World Swimming Championships in Gwangju, South Korea. Ahead of a verdict pending within days in the doping case of three-time Olympic champion Sun Yang, a Swiss supreme court document on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020 shows swimming’s governing body wanted to stop the World Anti-Doping Agency’s appeal. World swim body FINA supported arguments by Sun’s lawyers who asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport to throw out WADA’s case early last year in a pre-trial dispute over an alleged conflict of interest for the agency’s American lead prosecutor, Richard Young. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, file)
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China's world and Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang was handed an eight-year ban on Friday, a sanction that rules him out of this year's Tokyo Olympics, after he missed an out-of-competition test for doping.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) accepted an appeal from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) against a decision by swimming body Fina to clear Sun of wrongdoing for his conduct during the test in September 2018.

The 28-year-old is China's top swimmer, having won two gold medals at the 2012 London Olympic games and another in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, and the case has attracted huge interest in his homeland.

A Fina report said Sun questioned the credentials of the testers before members of his entourage smashed vials containing his blood samples with a hammer.

Sun had argued during the CAS hearing that the testers failed to prove their identity and behaved in an unprofessional manner.

He competed at last year’s world championships in South Korea under the shadow of the appeal, and three rivals snubbed him after races.

"The CAS Panel unanimously determined, to its comfortable satisfaction, that the athlete violated Article 2.5 FINA DC (Tampering with any part of Doping Control)," the CAS statement said.

"In particular, the Panel found that the personnel in charge of the doping control complied with all applicable requirements as set out in the ISTI (International Standard for Testing and Investigation).