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CAS exonerates Nicole Walker, but Canadian showjumping team remains disqualified from Pan Am Games

Wednesday, 05 May 2021
CAS

Photo © Erin Gilmore Photography Nicole Walker with Falco van Spieveld. Photo © Erin Gilmore Photography.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has issued its Arbitral Award with grounds in the case of Canadian showjumper Nicole Walker, Equestrian Canada and Panam Sports. The CAS Panel issued its decision in January this year, dismissing the appeals filed by Walker and Equestrian Canada – partially upholding Panam Sports’s appeal in ruling that the results for Team Canada in the jumping competition at the 2019 Pan Am Games were disqualified. However, the full Arbitral Award with the grounds for the CAS Panel’s decision was first communicated this week after having been issued on April 22, 2021. 

In 2019, Walker was a member of Canada’s showjumping team at the Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru. The event served as an Olympic qualifier for North America and Central & South America (Group D and E). After finishing 4th in the team competition, Canada earned one of the three Olympic quota slots available. Walker finished 4th individually, with Falco van Spieveld. 

In November that same year, the FEI announced that Walker had been provisionally suspended after she had tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, which is a prohibited substance under the FEI’s Anti-Doping Rules for Human Athletes (ADRHA). The sample had been taken on the 7th of August, the day of the team final in Lima. Later, the Panam Sports Disciplinary Commission found Walker to have committed an anti-doping rule violation.

As a consequence of the Disciplinary Commission’s decision, Walker’s results from both the team and individual competitions at the Pan Am Games were disqualified and her results in the team competitions were replaced by those of the fourth Canadian team member Lisa Carlsen. The Commission ordered Panam Sports to recalculate the team results accordingly, with Canada dropping to 7th place – losing its team quota place for the Tokyo Olympic Games, which was reallocated by the FEI to Argentina.

Walker appealed the Panam Sports Disciplinary Commission’s decision to CAS, as did Equestrian Canada. 

While CAS in its Arbitral Award has exonerated Walker, the disqualification of the Canadian showjumping team stands. CAS found that Walker inadvertently had ingested a single cup of coca tea on the morning of August 7 at the breakfast service of the hotel in which she was staying during the 2019 Pan Am Games in Lima, believing it to be green tea. 

A statement issued by Equestrian Canada on the CAS Arbitral Award reads: 

“EC is pleased that the CAS Panel accepted that Nicole innocently drank a cup of coca tea, believing it to be green tea. EC is further pleased that CAS found that the Canadian Show Jumping Team was not warned about the prevalence of coca-based products in Peru and that neither the Canadian Show Jumping Team nor Nicole had any knowledge that coca meant cocaine. Specifically, CAS found that the ingestion of the prohibited substance contained in the tea “was the result, and only the result of, the unintentional ingestion of cocaine… as a result of her using a teabag containing cocaine which she took from the breakfast service area of the Los Incas Lima Hotel.

However, EC is extremely disappointed that despite the Panel’s recognition of Nicole’s integrity and commitment to clean sport, her affected results at Lima 2019 were not reinstated, resulting in the Canadian Show Jumping Team remaining disqualified from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

EC has stood by Nicole throughout the discipline and appeals process and together, we will explore the option of appealing the CAS decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Lausanne, SUI.”

Walker also issued a statement, where she said: "I am very pleased that CAS accepted what I said as factually and scientifically correct. I take my health, competitions, and duty as a team athlete very seriously. While I appreciate the personal vindication, that is not as important to me as the team being able to compete.”

"It's very unfair that my teammates are barred from competing at the Olympic Games when the truth has been accepted. Team Canada competed fairly and has earned the right to be in Tokyo," Walker said.

"I am thankful for my family, friends, the team in the barn, and my Canadian teammates that have supported me throughout this process. I really can't put into words how much their support means to me, and I will forever be grateful to them," Walker stated. 

Walker’s lawyer Tim Danson said: "This case has nothing to do with cheating or gaining any competitive advantage. On the contrary, the CAS Panel found that if the coca tea had any effect on Nicole, it would have been detrimental to her athletic performance and consequently only beneficial to those teams competing against Canada.”

"Canada won fair and square. It is wrong that Canada is out of the Olympics and is replaced by Argentina. There is an appeal route to the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Lausanne, Switzerland. The grounds to appeal are very narrow. We are looking at this very seriously,” Danson stated. 

Click here for the CAS Arbitral Award.



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