CAS 94/129 USA Shooting & Q. / Union Internationale de Tir (UIT)
- Doping of a shooter (ephedrine)
- Disqualification and suspension for 3 months
- Absence of strict liability rule in the UIT Antidoping Regulations
- Need to establish the guilty intent of the shooter to sanction him
- Right to be heard and due process
1. If the strict liability standard is to be applied, this fact must be clearly stated. The fact that the Court of Arbitration for Sport has sympathy for the principle of a strict liability rule obviously does not allow the CAS to create such a rule where it does not exist.
2. The fight against doping is arduous, and it may require strict rules. But the rule-makers and the rule-appliers must begin by being strict with themselves. Regulations that may affect the careers of dedicated athletes must be predictable. They must emanate from duly authorised bodies. They must be adopted in constitutionally proper ways. They should not be the product of an obscure process of accretion. Athletes and officials should not be confronted with a thicket of mutually qualifying or even contradictory rules that can be understood only on the basis of the de facto practice over the course of many years of a small group of insiders.
3. If the “hearing” in a given case was insufficient in the first instance, the fact is that as long as there is a possibility of full appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport the deficiency may be cured.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport decides on 23 May 1995:
1.) Grants the relief requested by the Appellants, and accordingly:
2.) reinstates Q. as the winner of the 1994 UIT Cairo World Cup entitled to retain the gold medal from that event, and
3.) declares that USA Shooting was therefore in principle entitled to the Olympic country quota slot earned as a result of Q.’s performance (it being recognised that this slot cannot be used in practice to the extent that U.S. athletes have already attained the maximum of three slots for any one country).
4.) Makes no award of costs.
