Sun Yang, the Chinese swim star and three-time Olympic gold medalist, earned himself an eight-year ban Friday in a case in which the verdict itself was always a no-brainer.
Why?
You don’t get to take the law into your hands, figuratively and literally.
Or, put another way, even in the Far East, it’s not the Old West out there.
Or, if you prefer, vigilante justice is no justice at all.
Sun Yang at a meet in Beijing in January // Getty Images
The evidence in this case was clear: a security guard instructed by Sun Yang’s mother broke the casing around a vial of the swimmer’s blood. The swimmer lit the scene with the flashlight from his mobile phone.
It is one thing to question the accreditation of the sample-takers, a three-judge Court of Arbitration for Sport panel said. It is “quite another” to “act in such a way” — that is, smashing the vial with a hammer — that eliminates the chance to later test the sample.
OK. No quarrel with any of that.
But.
Sun Yang is one of China’s biggest sports stars — if not the biggest on the Olympic stage — and to hand him an eight-year ban, effectively ending his career, is a figurative hammer in a case in which it’s also clear he was not, repeat not, proven to have doped.
Instead, what this case proved is that — and everyone in swim circles knew this already — he is arrogant almost beyond words.
Being arrogant is perhaps not endearing. But being arrogant doesn’t get you eight years. Or, in the annals of litigation, as of Friday, does it?
To be clear, coming into this CAS hearing, Sun Yang’s doping scorecard was not pristine. He served three months off in 2014 — imposed by Chinese authorities — after testing positive for a stimulant that was banned at the time. That ban was not announced until after it ended.
But eight years?
The maximum?
WADA had requested a ban of between two and eight years.
This hammer, the eight years for a second offense, itself holds wildly uncertain consequences. The ruling came from a three-judge panel, all Western: one from Italy, another from the United Kingdom, a third with ties to the UK and Belgium.
For sure, other swimmers have complained, and for years, in spectacular fashion, about Sun Yang.
The interesting question is not so much whether they were right. The more pressing issue is whether those complaints and highly publicized demonstrations — some of which, in hindsight, may have smacked of hypocrisy in the wider anti-doping landscape — ratcheted up the pressure on the authorities to do something.
In the first instance, that meant this CAS case against Sun Yang. Which, again, outcome-wise, was a no-brainer. Here — kudos to lead prosecutor Rich Young, the American lawyer who is, as people close to the World Anti-Doping Agency and in the wider anti-doping landscape understand, and keenly, is one of the smartest, most capable minds out there.
A refresher: Young also prosecuted the very public case against Floyd Landis. He essentially wrote the World Anti-Doping Code. He is the guy you want when you have a case you need to win.
Moving along: how much pressure, how much weight, did the three-judge CAS panel give to the court of public opinion in handing out eight years?
We may never know.
But what we will know, given the fullness of time, is something else entirely.
In some way, some fashion, there will be retribution leveled on Sun Yang’s behalf by the Chinese authorities.
It may be direct. Maybe not so.
That it will be effected, and perhaps in multiple ways — that you can take to the bank.
For all the noise and attention that we in the West tend to give to the very public complaints around anti-doping and, in this context, that have attached to the Sun Yang matter, the Chinese — as ever — are playing a long game.
Perhaps Sun Yang’s only rival for public affection in China — at least Olympic-wise — would be the 2004 Athens Games hurdles champion, Lu Xiang. Of course, there is also the NBA star Yao Ming, also a proud Chinese Olympic competitor. Now, though, Sun Yang has been unmercifully swept out of the spotlight, and for all those in the West who want to depict Friday’s CAS ruling as long-awaited justice, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are very likely a billion-plus people who in the sentencing see a manifest if not gross injustice.
Indeed, the China Swimming Association said it “deeply regretted” the ruling and supported Sun Yang in “further pursuing his legal rights through litigation.”
For his part, Sun Yang said he had hired a lawyer to appeal — he’s very likely to lose — but what matters here is the aggressive if not incendiary nature of his words. That appeal, he said, is to “let more people know the truth. I firmly believe in my innocence! Firmly believe that facts must triumph over lies! I will fight to the end to defend my legitimate rights and interests.”