Daily Times

LONDON: Double Olympic champion Steven Lopez has had his life ban overturned on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. American Lopez was banned from the sport in September 2018 following sexual abuse claims. He and his brother, Jean, were banned by the United States’ Center for SafeSport. But the brothers have now had their bans lifted having challenged the ruling. The brothers’ suspensions were originally lifted on appeal, but World Taekwondo, the sport’s world governing body, kept them in place. However, having unsuccessfully challenging WT’s decision, the Lopez brothers appealed to CAS in June 2022. A CAS panel found that WT charged the brothers based on its 2011 code of ethics. However, because the incidents for which they were charged took place before 2011, they deemed this code could not be used. At a CAS hearing, WT submitted a 2008 code of ethics for the first time, but the panel considered this to be “inadmissibly, and impermissibly, late”, and said insufficient evidence was provided to prove this edition of the code of ethics was published or made available to athletes.