Four-time African badminton champion Kate Foo Kune was banned for two years on Wednesday in a doping case and will miss the Tokyo Olympics.
Foo Kune was the flag bearer for Mauritius at the opening ceremony for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected her claim that a bottle of water had been spiked with an anabolic steroid at the 2019 African championships in Nigeria.
The appeal was brought by the Badminton World Federation, which challenged its own doping tribunal’s ruling that the 27-year-old Foo Kune was not at fault and imposed no ban.
Foo Kune had claimed she had been the victim of deliberate spiking of her water by an ill-intentioned individual during the event in question, CAS said in a statement.
“The CAS panel found the athlete’s assertion of intentional spiking devoid of supporting evidence thereby falling short of a cogent explanation as to how the prohibited substance entered her body,” the court said.
The BWF accepted that while Foo Kone did not deliberately ingest the steroid, she could not benefit from a “no fault or no significant fault” ruling and should be banned.