The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has registered two appeals against the 16-month ban issued to figure skater Carolina Kostner by the Italian Anti-Doping Tribunal (TNA). Koster (pictured), a 2012 world champion, was sanctioned on 25 January 2015 after the Bolzano public prosecutor said that she had admitted lying about the whereabouts of her boyfriend, Olympic race-walking champion Alex Schwazer, so he could avoid being tested on 30 July 2012. Schwazer later tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The CAS said that Kostner had sought an annulment of the decision and a declaration that she has not breach anti-doping rules. The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) has also appealed for CAS to increase her sentence to two years. Article 2.8 of CONI’s Anti-Doping Sports Rules (NSA) prohibits athletes from ‘encouraging or helping, instigating, concealing or providing any other type of complicity with respect to any violation, or attempted violation, of the NSA’. Article 3.3 allows CONI to sanction athletes for ‘non-cooperation on the part of any person regarding compliance with the NSA, including failure to report the circumstances relevant to the assessment of the facts of doping’.

Kostner’s alleged complicity was uncovered by CONI due to documents received from the Bolzano public prosecutor, following an investigation into three of the four Italian sprinters that took silver at the 4x100m relay at the 2010 European Athletics Championships. You can read more about the history of the investigation here.