GWANGJU (South Korea) • China's swim king Sun Yang faces a September hearing over explosive doping allegations that could potentially end his career, a senior Fina official said yesterday.
A leaked doping panel report by the sport's governing body, which was corroborated by yesterday's edition of Australia's Daily Telegraph, claimed the three-gold Olympic champion had destroyed his own blood sample with a hammer.
However, the 27-year-old has been cleared to compete at the ongoing Fina World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.
While the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) after he was let off on a legal technicality, Fina executive director Cornel Marculescu has defended the stance taken by the organisation.
Calling the bombshell contents "very damaging", he told Agence France-Presse: "I don't know how it's possible for something this confidential to go out to the world.
"But the situation is very simple - we have a decision from the Fina doping panel, which is totally independent.
"According to the rules, Wada can appeal - and they did so - and CAS is going to hold a hearing some time in September so we wait to see what will happen."
Sun and a security guard are said to have smashed vials of blood collected after independent testers visited the athlete's villa in Zhejiang province last September.
If Wada wins its case and the nine-gold world champion is found guilty of a doping violation, he could face a lifetime ban after serving a three-month suspension in 2014 for taking banned stimulant he claimed was for a heart problem.
Sun has clashed with rival swimmers before, most notably at the 2016 Rio Olympics, when Australian Mack Horton branded him a "drug cheat" before pipping him to gold in the 400m freestyle.
But Marculescu insisted that Fina's decision to clear the 1,500m world-record holder on its end was the correct one as "it's very difficult to make somebody guilty without having any decision by the respective bodies".
Yet the shocking contents of the doping panel's 59-page report, dated Jan 3, look set to add fuel to the growing criticism over Fina's failure to ban Sun, with Australia's head swimming coach Jacco Verhaeren yesterday claiming the case had shaken the "reliability and trust in this system".
Marculescu, however, does not believe the revelations will lead to further animosity in the pool, despite Olympic 100m breaststroke winner Adam Peaty tweeting in March that he did not "want to see this guy competing at the world championships or Olympics".
He added: "Hopefully, there will be no problems. It's difficult to say, but I don't think it's going to have an influence one way or the other for the swimmers taking part."
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
