Swiss Federal Supreme Court Judgment of 20 May 2025, A. v. IBU
Motion to set aside CAS Award CAS 2020/A/6834 of 9 September 2024
The case concerns a former elite Russian biathlete (the Athlete) sanctioned by the International Biathlon Union (IBU) for an anti-doping rule violation based on data extracted from the Moscow laboratory’s LIMS system. According to the IBU, her 22 March 2013 urine sample initially tested positive for a prohibited substance (ostarine) but was falsely recorded as negative in ADAMS, which was later discovered through the LIMS 2015 data. After disciplinary proceedings, the IBU suspended the athlete for two years and disqualified all results from March 2013 to her retirement. The Athlete appealed to the CAS, which rejected her case in September 2024, finding the LIMS 2015 data authentic and concluding that the Athlete had used a prohibited substance.
In her subsequent motion for annulment to the SFT, the Athlete invoked a violation of her right to be heard (Art. 190 para. 2 (d) PILA) and violation of public policy (Art. 190 para. 2 (e) PILA based on the principle in dubio pro reo, claiming that the panel had relied on insufficiently reliable evidence and that doubts should have favoured her innocence.
The SFT dismissed both grievances. First, it held that the CAS had thoroughly analysed the evidence—including the re-analysis statistics highlighted by the Athlete—and had implicitly but clearly rejected her arguments on the alleged unreliability of the LIMS system. Second, and similar to several other prior judgments, the SFT confirmed its case law that the ECHR presumption of innocence does not apply directly to discplinary proceedings of private sports bodies. With respect to the arguments raised by the Athlete following the ECHR Semenya judgment, the SFT repeated that the Grand Chamber ECHR judgment was, at that time, still pending; interestingly, said judgment was issued shortly afterwards, i.e. in July 2025 (see my note here) so that it will be interesting to see the SFT’s reaction to this argument in its subsequent judgments, now that the ECHR Semenya judgment is final.
All in all, the SFT judgment repeats the well-established federal jurisprudence on the very narrow scope of review within the scope of public policy (it should be the result, not the reasoning of the CAS award, that should be incompatible with Swiss public policy) and the non-application of criminal-law principles to sports disciplinary cases (see also the similar SFT 4A_546/2024 of 20 May 2025).
