Andy has been writing about the governance of sport for over 15 years. Prior to working on the Sports Integrity Initiative, he was the editor of World Sports Law Report for eight years. He has also worked for the Press Association and has written for numerous trade magazines. He has also created, chaired and spoken at numerous conferences on the business of sport, and produced the Sports Law Show for iSportConnect TV.
All posts by Andy Brown
No sanctions will be imposed on Russia until the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rules on the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s (RUSADA) appeal against the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) decision to declare it non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code. At a Christmas Eve meeting, the RUSADA Executive Board approved...
• The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) of World Athletics has given the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) until 2 January to respond to charges that it failed to cooperate with and obstructed an investigation into ‘whereabouts’ violations committed by high jumper Danil Lysenko, reports InsideTheGames. RusAF was initially given a...
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SKR or Sledcom) has backed the assertions of Russian authorities that Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov remotely manipulated the contents of the Moscow Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). The former management of the Moscow Laboratory remotely accessed the LIMS database from IP addresses in...
The Supervisory Board of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) has recommended that the agency appeal against the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) decision to declare it non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code for a four year period. The recommendation will be discussed at a RUSADA Executive Committee meeting on Christmas...
• Snowboarder Nikita Aytaneev has been sanctioned with a two year ban for three ‘whereabouts’ violations in a 12 month period, the Russian Snowboarding Federation (RSF) has told State news agency TASS. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, signatories are required to establish a Registered Testing Pool (RTP) of a...
• The international federation of football associations (FIFA) announced it has filed a claim in the Swiss courts against Joseph S. Blatter and Michel Platini, its former President and Vice President, seeking to recover a CHF2 million (€1.8 million) ‘undue payment’ made to Platini in 2011. In 2017, the...
A mistake by the Beijing Laboratory has led the international swimming federation to withdraw a doping case against a Dutch swimmer, raising a question mark over whether it made a mistake in FINA’s case against Hiromasa Fujimori. FINA notified Kira Toussaint about an adverse analytical finding (AAF) after a...
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has clarified that its ban on athletes representing Russia only covers international multi-sport events or World Championships organised by a Code signatory. This means that footballers will be free to represent their country at the 2020 European Championships, which isn’t a World Championship, but...
• One Kenyan distance runner has been sanctioned with a four year ban, and two others have been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) of World Athletics. Sarah Chepchirchir has been sanctioned with a four year ban, after being provisionally suspended in February due to abnormalities in...
France’s Parquet National Financier (PNF) has opened an investigation into the appointment of Qatar as host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, reports Mediapart, after a FIFA decision alleged that three officials were paid bribes in order to vote for the Gulf State. In addition, a Report published by...
The Supervisory Board of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) will decide on any appeal against the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) decision to declare it non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code for a four year period at a 19 December meeting. Yuriy Ganus (Юрия Гануса) and Margarita Pakhnotskaya (Маргарита Пахноцкая),...
Telling the truth doesn’t always mean a lighter punishment, just as it is very difficult to prove that somebody is lying in order to issue a harsh punishment. The same can be true in anti-doping, as these two cases (here and here) illustrate. Often, the first line of defence...
The Russian Weightlifting Federation (RWF) has launched an investigation, after a Russian State broadcaster used messages planted into the Moscow Laboratory’s message forum by the Russian authorities to suggest that Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov covering up positive tests reported by weightlifters. The documentary (below), produced by State broadcaster NTV, ‘cited...
• Two female tennis players have been provisionally suspended by the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) due to an investigation into potential breaches of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Programme (TACP). Uzbekistani Albina Khabibulina and Kyrgyzstani Ksenia Palkina have been provisionally suspended. Other than announcing the provisional suspensions, the TIU did not...
FIFA argues that China has committed to respecting human rights during the 2021 Club World Cup (CWC), after Human Rights Watch (HRW) discovered that no bidding process or human rights risk assessment had been carried out in relation to the tournament. China was appointed as host at the end...
