A new file for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced via a press release on Tuesday February 13 that it had referred the matter to the court based in Lausanne to examine the case of two countries: Nigeria and Venezuela. Their national anti-doping agencies were sanctioned last fall for non-compliance with the world anti-doping code. They are not the first, and certainly not the last either. But with less than six months before the Paris 2024 Games, the two organizations are slow to put their operations in order. In the case of Nigeria, WADA believes that the national agency “still does not meet several essential requirements of its anti-doping program”. Same slowness in Venezuela, where the national organization has not “still not met a number of critical requirements arising from the Code compliance questionnaire exercise”. Both agencies dispute this, of course, but their denial did not prevent WADA from turning to the CAS. Pending the court's decision, the flags of the two countries will be absent from major competitions, including the Paris 2024 Games. But WADA specifies in its press release: any sanctions against them would only be applied once the decision has been made. CAS decision.
