Eight-Month Sanction for Doping Violation

Malaysian player Lee Chong Wei, has received an eight-month sanction for an anti-doping regulation violation.

This sanction, imposed by the BWF Doping Hearing Panel, has resulted from an Adverse Analytical Finding of Lee’s sample taken at the BWF World Championships last 30 August in Denmark. That sample contained Dexamethasone, a Spechified, a Specified Substance prohibited “in competition”, the source of which was a contaminated casing(s) of a gelatin capsule(s) containing a food supplement that Lee had been taking.

Appearing before the BWF Doping Hearing Panel on 11 April, Lee accepted that Dexamethasone was present in his sample and that he had consequently committed an anti-doping violation under regulation 2.1 of the BWF Anti-Doping Regulations (2009). His argument was that he did so inadvertently and that either no sanction should take place according to Clause 10.5.1, or at least that any sanction should be reduced according to Clause 10.4.

Given arguments and evidence put forward by Lee’s legal team at the hearing in the Netherlands, the panel stated: “The panel is con=vinced this is nost a case of doping with intent to cheat.”

However, the panel found that Lee had been “negligent”, but with the degree of negligence being “rather light” as “he did not realise he had ingested a Specified Substance (Dexamethasone)”.

That conclusion led to a sanction of eight months’ ineligibillity.

The Doping Hearing Panel has deemed it “correct and fair” to backdate the period of ineligibility to the date of sample collection, thereby ending his sanction on 30 April, 2015, and making Lee Chong Wei eligible to resume his badminton career on Friday 1 May, 2015.

Lee’s runner-up result in Men’s Singles competition of last year’s BWF World Championships has been disqualified but results ob-tained between 30 August,2014, and 2 October, 2014 ( the date Lee was notified of his positive test), will stand.

Citing Clause 10.4 of the BWF Anti-Doping Regulations (2009) – Elimination or reduction of the period of Ineligibility for Specified Sub-stances under specific circumstances – the three-member panel found the athlete met all conditions for this clause to be applicable. These being: