The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) appeal against French fencer Ysaora Thibus. The Fédération Internationale d’Escrime (FIE) was also named in the appeal.
Thibus was provisionally suspended for testing positive for performance-enhancing (PEDs) substances. Her appeal was that she ingested the PED by kissing her partner. It was in January 2024, during an in-competition test, that she tested positive for ostarine.
The result
According to the press release, on July 17, 2024, WADA appealed to CAS against the decision, rejecting the athlete’s explanations that the most probable cause for the result was a contamination through kissing with her then partner, who had been using a product containing ostarine without her knowledge. WADA requested that CAS set aside the decision and sanction Ms. Thibus with a period of ineligibility of four years.
On March 6, 2025, an in-person hearing took place at CAS headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The CAS Panel considered the evidence and noted that it is scientifically established that the intake of an ostarine dose similar to the dose ingested by Ms. Thibus’s then partner would have left sufficient amounts of ostarine in the saliva to contaminate a person through kissing. The Panel also accepted that Ms.
Thibus’s partner was taking ostarine from January 5, 2024, and there was contamination over 9 days with a cumulative effect. The Panel excluded the possibility that Ms. Thibus intentionally ingested the ostarine, in addition to being contaminated.
The CAS Panel ruled that the ADRV for the presence of ostarine was not intentional, and that it is not questionable that Ms. Thibus bears no fault or negligence. The decision is upheld, and the appeal is dismissed.
This is an unofficial summary for media use.
The decision is not good for any sport, including athletics
The CAS’s decision is not a good one for any sport. This decision will give cheating athletes yet another tool to attempt to get away with doping when testing positive.
Athletes already game the system by abusing three missed tests in a 12-month period. Some load their cell phone voicemail so that they cannot receive messages from doping control officers when absent. The athletes will then miss one or two tests before rolling off the doping protocol and therefore test clean. The athletes do not always get it right, for example, the case of Mohamed Katir, but it happens more often than the public knows.
Athletes with partners (and perhaps with fake partners) could conceivably dope at the same time. And when testing positive, could appeal that contamination happened through physical contact. In some cases, the partner could be tested, resulting in delays and higher costs to the program.
The CAS may have just stepped into it with this appeal from WADA against athlete Ysaora Thibus and the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime.
Bring on the appeals.
