(Jamaica Gleaner) The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has reduced the ban imposed on Jamaican sprinters Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson from 18 months to six months.
The 18-month ban handed down by the Jamaica Anti-doping Disciplinary Panel in April this year was with effect from June 21, 2013.
In a statement on its website, the CAS said in effect the six-month ban would have been already served.
Since June 18, the athletes were being allowed to compete, after the CAS granted a stay of the decisions of the Jamaica Anti-doping Disciplinary Panel.
Simpson and Powell appealed to the CAS against their 18-month suspension saying the offence committed was minor because it was caused by contamination of the food supplement “Epiphany D1”.
The supplement was found to contain Oxilofrine.
The athletes had requested that the suspensions be reduced to three months. On July 7 and 8, their hearing was held in New York.
The CAS says the full award with grounds will be issued in a few weeks.
This is the third case involving Jamaicans which CAS has overturned. In February, CAS cleared two-time Olympic 200-metre champion Veronica Campbell-Brown of a doping violation.
Campbell-Brown was provisionally suspended by the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association after she tested positive for a banned diuretic last May.
And in May, Dominique Blake, the Jamaican 400 metres runner, had her drug ban reduced from six to four and a half years by the CAS.
