The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has upheld the Athletics Integrity Unit’s (AIU) appeal of the doping case of American sprinter Erriyon Knighton.
The appeal
Knighton, as far as the CAS is concerned, finds that he failed to prove that the steroid trenbolone found in his test sample was from contaminated meat.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) also filed an appeal. The appeals were against the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which had accepted the defence.
Knighton won bronze and silver medals at the 2022 Eugene and 2023 Budapest World Athletics Championships in the 200 metre sprint. He placed fourth in both the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games in the same event. Knighton holds the U18 and U20 national 200m records. The U20 best is 19.49, set in 2022.
Trenbolone, used by athletes to enhance muscle mass and strength, is classified as an anabolic steroid on the WADA Prohibited List and is banned in and out of competition. It is also used in the US meat industry to promote muscle growth and mass in cattle.
The matter before the court
The matter was initially heard by a sole arbitrator in the United States in June 2024, who accepted that 21-year-old Knighton had eaten contaminated oxtail purchased from a Florida restaurant capable of causing his positive test, and that he therefore bore No Fault for his
violation and should serve no period of ineligibility.
The three-member CAS Panel, headed by Jacques Radoux, agreed that Knighton had not established the source of his Trenbolone finding. The Panel concluded that some of the assumptions made by Knighton’s experts were “highly unlikely,” and that the evidence did not
show that imported meat was likely to contain Trenbolone residues at the level required to cause the finding, or that animals were injected/treated in a way that could have caused such residue levels. Therefore, whilst the contamination scenario put forward by Knighton was not “scientifically impossible”, it was not “plausible” on the evidence and “certainly not more likely than not.”
The Panel also found that Knighton had failed to prove a lack of intent in the absence of being able to establish source, because intentional use cannot be ruled out by: a low concentration of the substance in question; negative tests in proximity to the positive test; a lack of evidence of doping doses or of performance enhancing effect; a negative hair analysis or a negative polygraph test.
In conclusion, the Panel found that Knighton failed to rebut the assumption. His ADRV was intentional, and a four-year ban was imposed on him with credit for the period of provisional suspension he served between 12 April 2024 and 19 June 2024. The Panel also disqualified the athlete’s results between March 26, 2024 and 12 April 12, 2024, the date of his provisional suspension
