Sun Yang handed 8-year ban for smashing blood vials

Mack Horton is gonna love this

China’s most celebrated swimmer has been banned from competition for eight years for a drug test gone very awry.

The decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) effectively ends the career of Sun Yang. The 28-year-old is one of China’s most successful athletes of all-time, having won three Olympic gold medals and 11 world championships.

In September 2018, Sun and his mother allegedly ordered one of their security guards to smash a vial of Sun’s blood with a hammer during a drug test at his home after questioning the testers’ credentials.

Though the world’s swimming federation, Fina, initially determined that it would “never know” the truth of what happened that night and let Sun off with a slap on the wrist, the case was quickly picked up by the World Anti-Doping Agency which referred it to the Cas.

At a public hearing in November, Sun declared his innocence, maintaining that the inspectors had failed to show proper identification papers.

At around the same time, Chinese state media published an interview with a man who, anonymously, claimed to have been one of the three testers. He described himself as a builder who didn’t know the first thing about drug testing and had only come along as a favor for an old middle school classmate.

However, in the end, Cas was not persuaded by Sun’s arguments, stating:

The Athlete failed to establish that he had a compelling justification to destroy his sample collection containers and forego the doping control when, in his opinion, the collection protocol was not in compliance with the ISTI. As the Panel noted, it is one thing, having provided a blood sample, to question the accreditation of the testing personnel while keeping the intact samples in the possession of the testing authorities; it is quite another thing, after lengthy exchanges and warnings as to the consequences, to act in such a way that results in destroying the sample containers, thereby eliminating any chance of testing the sample at a later stage.

Eight years was the maximum ban that the Cas could have handed out.

This is the second time that Sun has been suspended following a three-month sentence served in 2014 after he tested positive for a stimulant called trimetazidine.

The swimmer claimed that the stimulant had unknowingly got into his blood via a heart medication that he had been taking for years and was previously legal.

That suspension led to some serious drama during the 2016 Rio Olympics with Sun’s Australian rival Mack Horton calling him a “drug cheat,” leading to the entire country of China turning against Horton.

Yet more drama played out last year as Horton refused to join Sun on the medal stand at the World Aquatics Championship.

British swimmer Duncan Scott similarly snubbed Sun at another event, leading to Sun smirking and telling Scott, “You’re a loser. I’m a winner, yeah?” as they walked off the stage.