Chong Wei Receives Eight Months Suspension, Ends On 30 April

KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 (Bernama) -- Former world number one shuttler, Lee Chong Wei (left) received eight months suspension for an anti-doping regulation violation, starting from August 30 last year. According to a Badminton World Federation (BWF) statement, the sanction, imposed by the BWF Doping Hearing Panel, had resulted from an Adverse Analytical Finding of Lee’s sample taken at the BWF World Championships the same day in Denmark. The Doping Hearing Panel has deemed it “correct and fair” to backdate the period of ineligibility to the date of sample collection, thereby ending his sanction on 30 April, 2015, and making Lee Chong Wei eligible to resume his badminton career on 1 May, 2015. The sample contained Dexamethasone, a Specified Substance prohibited "in competitions”, the source of which was a contaminated casing(s) of a gelatin capsule(s) containing a food supplement that Lee had been taking. However, the panel found that Lee had been “negligent”, but with the degree of negligence being “rather light” as “he did not realise he had ingested a Specified Substance (Dexamethasone)”. Appearing before the BWF Doping Hearing Panel on April 11, Lee accepted that Dexamethasone was present in his sample and that he had consequently committed an anti-doping violation under regulation 2.1 of the BWF Anti-Doping Regulations (2009). (photoBERNAMA) -- BERNAMA