3-year doping ban for Spanish World Champion, Marta Dominguez

Spanish athlete Marta Dominguez received a 3-year ban for doping from the Tribunal Arbitral of Sport (TAS) in Lausanne on Wednesday.

The organization accepted the appeal by the International Athletics Federation (IAAF) and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) against the decision which had been taken by the Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA) to absolve her of irregularities in her biological passport.

Although the ban, which is backdated to June 24, 2015, will have little effect on sporting career of the 40-year-old, who is now retired from competition, the TAS also decided to eliminate all of Dominguez's results which were achieved after August 5th, 2009.

That means Dominguez, who for the past four years has had a place in the Spanish Senate, representing the right wing People's Party (PP), has been stripped of the 3,000 meter hurdles World title she won in Berlin and the silver medal she won in the same event in the 2010 European Championships held in Barcelona.

The athlete had based her defense on the supposed lack of accuracy in the biological passport, alleging her results could have been affected by hyperthyroidism, however the TAS rejected that defense, stating "the panel concluded that none of the justifications offered...were sufficient for the referees to convinced" that the results on her passport could be rejected.

An immediate consequence of the decision was that Dominguez was dropped from the electoral list of the PP, where she would have been 19th in their list of candidates in Madrid for a seat in the Congress. Endit