T&T lead­ing women's ath­lete, Michelle-Lee Ahye, may prof­it from the Olympic Games be­ing post­poned to next year.

The na­tion­al sprint cham­pi­on is cur­rent­ly ap­peal­ing a two-year ban by the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Fed­er­a­tions (IAAF), with the as­sis­tance of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) through T&T lawyer Dave Williams at the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Switzer­land.

Williams, who has a great record in mat­ters such as these, spoke to host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on I95.5fm's Thurs­day Is­ports pro­gramme on the sta­tus and the im­pact of the change in the date of the Olympic Games to Ju­ly next year.

“Michelle’s ban start­ed on April 19, 2019 and it is a two-year ban, as a con­se­quence it is ex­pect­ed to end on April 19, 2021,” con­firmed Williams.

The na­tion­al sprint­er was been banned for two years by the World Ath­let­ics Dis­ci­pli­nary Tri­bunal. The ban which was an­nounced by the Ath­letes In­tegri­ty Unit on Jan­u­ary 14, meant that Ahye would not have been able to com­pete at the Tokyo Olympics this year.

The ban took ef­fect from April 19 last year and was is­sued against Ahye for miss­ing three drug tests with­in a 12-month pe­ri­od ac­cord­ing to IAAF reg­u­la­tions. She was found guilty of "where­abouts fail­ures" ac­cord­ing to the IAAF’s An­ti-Dop­ing Rules for miss­ing three drug tests on June 23, 2018, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2019 and April 19, 2019.

With the Tokyo Olympics now post­poned to Ju­ly 2021 be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Williams ex­plained the im­pli­ca­tions of such and whether it means that Ahye will be avail­able to rep­re­sent T&T.

"Yes, on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty yes, she is avail­able. There is no prece­dent in place that would pre­vent her from par­tic­i­pat­ing once she qual­i­fies, in the Ju­ly 2021 Olympics,” said Williams, who on whether the cur­rent ap­peal on her be­half be­fore CAS should be pulled, added that the pe­ri­od of in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty is not the on­ly grounds that the TTOC is ap­peal­ing.

"Michelle would have in fact suf­fered as a re­sult of the or­der is­sued by the Tri­bunal, the medals, the ti­tles and awards that she would have re­ceived dur­ing the pe­ri­od (April to Au­gust, 2019), as a re­sult of the Tri­bunal’s rul­ing, she would no longer be en­ti­tled to such, as a mat­ter of fact, the or­der goes on to say that Michele’s re­sult from April 2019 shall be dis­qual­i­fied with all re­sult­ing con­se­quences in­clud­ing the for­fei­ture of any ti­tles or awards, medals, points so we are ap­peal­ing that as well. So not with­stand­ing the fact that yes she has ben­e­fit­ted as a con­se­quence of COVID-19, there are still is­sues that we would like to have re­versed in Michelle’s favour.

“We have lodged our ap­peal, the re­spon­dent has since sub­mit­ted their re­sponse to our ap­peal and it is up to CAS now, both par­ties have in fact made their rel­e­vant sub­mis­sions to CAS, so the mat­ter is now be­ing de­lib­er­at­ed on by CAS."

Williams though could not con­firm a date for a judg­ment from CAS say­ing, "I am not aware of any par­tic­u­lar date, that a rul­ing would be made, as any mat­ter be­fore the court, it goes on the ba­sis of pri­or­i­ty so our mat­ter cer­tain­ly would have been pri­or­i­ties and it would have to be viewed in the con­text of that. I would have writ­ten CAS, seek­ing an ex­pe­di­tious hear­ing, how­ev­er, they in­di­cat­ed that it would have to be in keep­ing the sta­tus of list­ed mat­ters. But that was ac­tu­al­ly not ac­cept­ed so to speak.”

The good news is that the cur­rent ban can­not be ex­tend­ed no mat­ter the ver­dict of CAS.

”Cer­tain­ly not be­cause the stan­dard sanc­tion for the vi­o­la­tion that Michele would have been held cul­pa­ble for is ac­tu­al­ly two years and as for train­ing, cer­tain­ly she can be­cause the or­der did not pre­vent her from do­ing that,” said Williams.

Per­haps, there is some light at the end of the tun­nel from the Olympics post­pone­ment for Ahye, who may yet again be in the na­tion­al colours at Tokyo 2021.