Women’s 400-meter world champion Salwa Eid Naser faced a new legal case that could see her banned before the Tokyo Olympics.
Track and field’s Athletics Integrity Unit said on Thursday that it appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against a decision last month to close a case against Naser, who had been charged with breaking anti-doping rules.
Naser had missed doping tests and failed to update details of how she could be found by sample collection officials, but the charges were dismissed on a technicality.
An independent tribunal judged that Naser’s three so-called “whereabouts failures” did happen within a 12-month calendar period but technically counted as spanning more than one year.
The ruling meant Naser, who was born in Nigeria but competes for Bahrain, kept her title from the 2019 world championships and was cleared to compete in Tokyo next year.
The 22-year-old Naser ran the fastest women’s 400 time since 1985 to win the world title in Doha, Qatar.
CAS typically take several months to prepare a hearing in a case.