FILE – France’s Ysaora Thibus reacts after loosing the ladies’s individual Foil round of 32 competition against Poland’s Julia Walczyk Klimaszyk through the 2024 Summer Olympics on the Grand Palais, July 28, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)
LAUSANNE, Switzerland—French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus was cleared of a doping allegation on Monday since the judges accepted she was contaminated by kissing her American partner over a period of nine days.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling echoed a verdict clearing one other French athlete with the same defense in a doping allegation—tennis player Richard Gasquet within the celebrated “cocaine kiss” case in 2009.
CAS said within the Thibus case its judging panel dismissed an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which asked for her to be banned for 4 years.
Thibus tested positive for the anabolic substance ostarine in January 2024. She was later cleared by an International Fencing Federation tribunal weeks before the Paris Olympics, which let her compete there.
WADA challenged the reason that Thibus was contaminated “through kissing along with her then partner, who had been using a product containing ostarine without her knowledge,” CAS said.
The court said on Monday “it’s scientifically established that the intake of an ostarine dose just like the dose ingested by Ms Thibus’ then partner would have left sufficient amounts of ostarine within the saliva to contaminate an individual through kissing.”
Cumulative effect
The CAS judges “accepted that Ms Thibus’ then partner was taking ostarine from Jan. 5, 2024, and that there was contamination over nine days with a cumulative effect.”
Her partner on the time was Race Imboden, a two-time Olympic fencing bronze medalist for the US.
Thibus, a silver medalist for France in women’s team foil on the Tokyo Olympics, placed fifth at that event in Paris and twenty eighth in the ladies’s individual foil. —AP