The Nordic combiner Mario Seidl has described the confirmation of his four-year doping lock by the International Sports Court (CAS) as a “misjudgment” and asserted his innocence.
The 32-year-old Austrian described his already expired lock from November 28, 2019 to November 27, 2023 as “judicial error, which was created from a wrong basic hypothesis of the responsible anti-doping authorities”.
After Seidl had a good five years ago at a blood control, Austria’s national anti-doping agency initiated a trial against the three-time World Cup medalist and team Olympic piece in January 2020 in 2018 and retroactive it in July 2022 for four years.
Seidl, on the other hand, obtained an objection, which has been rejected. “With the judgment of the CAS, the decision of the arbitration commission is now confirmed – this is legally binding,” said the Austrian Ski Association. Since all the competitive results of Seidl not only for the time of his now confirmed doping lock, but also between October 6, 2016 and February 18, 2017 and February 19, 2019 and April 1, 2019, the combinator loses two of his four bronze medals.
Horror at Seidl
Seidl sees himself as a victim and expressed criticism of the judgment. “The truth is: As a athlete, I never put an incorrect behavior and never let anything come.
In the past five and a half years he had done “everything in my power to educate this error. I have experienced a nightmare in a wake state, including police investigations with telephone surveillance, observation and house search,” said Seidl.
In the meantime, all criminal investigations against him have been hired. “However, sports jurisdiction works differently: The presumption of the rule of law does not apply here, here the presumption of guilt, from which one has to prove as a athlete,”, “criticized Seidl. Despite a lie detective test and medical report, he “unfortunately not yet managed”.