The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) announces that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has upheld the decision rendered by the UCI Anti-Doping Tribunal on 20 September 2024, following the appeal filed by Ukrainian athlete Iryna Popova.
The CAS confirmed that Ms Popova committed an Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) for use of a prohibited substance or a prohibited method due to unexplained abnormalities in her Athlete Biological Passport (*) in 2016 and 2022. The CAS therefore confirmed the four-year period of ineligibility imposed on the rider by the UCI Anti-Doping Tribunal (20 September 2024 – 19 September 2028).
The UCI welcomes this ruling, which reflects its commitment to protecting the integrity of cycling. The CAS award will be published in due time on the UCI website.
The UCI will not comment further on the matter.
(*) The Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) is an individual electronic record for each rider, in which the results of all doping tests collected as part of the ABP programme over a given period are collated. The International Testing Agency (ITA), the independent entity to which the UCI delegated its anti-doping programme while retaining responsibility for the management of results and the prosecution of anti-doping rule violations, manages the ABP programme in collaboration with the Athlete Passport Management Unit (APMU) of Lausanne, Switzerland (the APMU of Lausanne is associated with the World Anti-Doping Agency accredited Laboratory of Lausanne). Athlete Biological Passport cases are prosecuted based on the opinion of an independent Expert Panel of the APMU.