Article

  • Restless Christmas for Malisse with appeal to be decided

    12/12/09 4:24 PM | Johan Lindahl
    Restless Christmas for Malisse with appeal to be decided Xavier Malisse will spend what could be a restless Christmas, waiting until January for his appeal against a one-year ban for missing anti-doping tests to be announced.

    The 29-year-old ranked 94th has said that should he receive the sanction, it would likely mean the end of his career.

    The punishment stems from the fact that Malisse - along with women's US Open semi-finalist Yanina Wickmayer - both failed on several occasions to comply with the "whereabouts" rule which forces professional to report their locations for possible testing to anti-drug enforcers 365 days per year. Notification must be given down to the hour in three-month blocks.

    The WTA has asked for the restriction to be loosened during competition week, when testers obviously know the location of players entered in any given event.

    The pair of Belgians were banned by a local sports body, with the sentence upheld by the world body WADA. WADA is now appealing for harsher sentences, calling for two-year bans instead of just one.

    Lawyers for the players predictably filed appeals against that scenarios with the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

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Comments

2 yr bans for failing to comply with a ridiculous demand is outrageous. may as well the just ban them for life.
2 yr bans should be reserved for those who test +ve for banned substances.

homos , 12/13/09 4:42 AM


It does seem awfully harsh. I know Malisse has battled back from some pretty bad injuries and had been working hard to be in good shape for this next season and Wickmayer was experiencing her best season ... so were they just careless ( if so, what a shame, although highly unprofessional no matter what one thinks of the regulations) or were they really trying to hide something? It seems ludicrous to me, with all the checks in place, that any athlete would try to enhance their performance this way ... but I'm not in their shoes.

smr , 12/13/09 3:15 PM



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