No athlete wants to end up in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas). Only, as with the public court, many inevitably do, and it seems the numbers are increasing. Especially in Olympic year. If sporting justice could be described as a game it’s the last place left to play it.

Exactly why so many athletes end up there is of special interest to Jack Anderson, professor of Sports Law at Queen’s University, Belfast. Anderson was recently appointed onto the list of Cas arbitrators, who between them hear about 400 international cases a year from the court headquarters at Château de Béthusy in Lausanne, Switzerland.

This Friday, for example, Cas will hear the final case between the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the six athletes who were issued with “selective disqualification of results” by the Russian Anti-doping Agency (RUSADA). The Cas decision will have far-reaching consequences because if one of those athletes, Sergey Kirdyapkin, loses his case then Ireland’s Rob Heffernan will be automatically promoted to the Olympic bronze medal from the 50km walk in London 2012. (Kirdyapkin originally won, only later to fail a doping test.)

The IAAF versus Rusada case also demonstrates how much Cas has moved on since it was founded in 1984, firstly as a sport-specific jurisdiction for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It was later made completely independent of the IOC, while the cases being heard branched out from the mostly disciplinary to include the commercial and even the civil.

Doping cases typically deal with athletes appealing the severity of their bans, although the IAAF case is dealing with a ban that is considered too lenient. The cases, in other words, are constantly evolving.

“In many ways Cas has become the agenda-setter for the laws around sport,” says Anderson. “It can be dull at times, but the sporting landscape has changed so much over the last 30 years that new cases are constantly developing all the time.

“At this stage almost every major sporting organisation has signed up to Cas, as the final binding arbitrator, with the exception of the major field sports in America. Most sports definitely prefer Cas to the public courts, which can be gruelling, very expensive, and very disruptive to the athlete.

“And the biggest issue, unfortunately, is still doping. If an athlete is banned for four years, or somehow they feel were unfairly sanctioned, they are likely to challenge that. Although if an athlete is found guilty of a doping offence it would be very rare for Cas to overturn that. There is that strictly liability rule. So most of what Cas deal with is the penalty, or sanction.

“And for various reasons the penalty might be reduced, if say there was a very low dose of some doping substance. And in fairness Cas has entertained some of those. But the basic rule applies, in that all athletes are responsible for what shows up in their sample. At the same time one of the reasons the standard ban was increased again from two to four years is because there is almost an expectation there that bans sometimes will be negotiated down. That’s just the reality of it.”  Special knowledge For Anderson, a Limerick native, the appointment as a Cas arbitrator hasn’t come without good reason: Cas has a pool of around 300 arbitrators, mostly with legal backgrounds, all recognised for their special knowledge of sports law. Anderson already serves as an arbitrator for both Just Sport Ireland and Sports Resolutions UK (a sort of national Cas), and also acts as secretary of the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA), the independent appeal body of the GAA (equally binding, and final). “You actually learn an awful lot about sport arbitration in the DRA, I can assure you,” he says.

The way Cas hears a case is relatively straightforward, but it can be a slow process, usually taking between six to 12 months (although ad hoc divisions are set up around the Olympics, World Cup, etc).

“When a dispute comes in, both sides can choose a person from the list of arbitrators,” explains Anderson. “Cas then appoints a chair, which makes for the three-person Cas judging panel. So essentially both sides can choose the arbitrator they feel will best represent their interest, with the third person then chosen by Cas.

“And Cas, a bit like Wada [the World Anti-Doping Agency], is more about vindicating clean athletes. And it doesn’t deal with any compensation, although sometimes that is negotiated between, say, the athlete and the federation. It can be costly, and that sometimes makes it prohibitive, or somewhat elitist. Although Cas has actually responded to that by providing a sort of legal aid system for athletes, and that’s a help.

“And they don’t just meet in Switzerland now, again to respect the rights of athletes.”

But Cas continues to evolve in other ways too. German speed skater Claudia Pechstein recently won her case in the Munich Court of Appeal against the Cas decision to uphold a ban for an alleged offence back in 2009: the Munich court essentially found the Cas binding arbitration as invalid, and Pechstein is now seeking some €4.4 million in compensation. No one is sure yet how this might impact on future Cas decisions, although Pechstein’s case certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed. Match-fixing Then there is the increasingly murky world of match-fixing, many cases of which end up with Cas. Just last week the European Sport Security Association (ESSA) report highlighted the problem in tennis, which accounted for nearly three quarters of all the suspicious betting alerts issued in 2015 (73 of the 100 reported cases).

“The tennis situation is very interesting,” says Anderson, “because it was one of the first sports to set up a dedicated integrity unit. And some of the bans have been very severe. The problem now is that a tennis player, like a snooker player, can control the flow of the game, but it’s very hard to detect whether they are trying with full merit or not.

“Also, and according to the International Tennis Federation’s own figures, nearly half of registered pro players earn very minimal amounts. So therefore, although certainly not excusing them, some are susceptible to an approach. Some of them can earn money quickly that way, and we see it too with soccer players from eastern Europe, who are very poorly paid. They’re also more susceptible to match fixing.

“Also, with tennis, an irregular betting pattern doesn’t mean the match itself is fixed. It simply means an unusual flow of money, and that doesn’t necessarily mean players are throwing matches. That’s where Cas can come in, to look at the evidence. Players may contest a ban for allegation of fixing, which can be five or 10 years. And it’s not far off being accused of criminal fraud, so they will take that very seriously, in terms of their own reputation. Or indeed claim that they were merely victims.

“Because remember, some of the people approaching them are pretty serious criminals. A lot of it has to do with money laundering, through the gambling market. So players can act under duress. So put all those factors in and that makes for a very interesting disciplinary case. You don’t want the player to become a scapegoat.  Protecting players “There is a kind of panic about match-fixing at the moment. But it has been with us for decades. Part of the problem now is the betting market has become huge, particularly the unregulated markets in Asia, and because of the huge money flow that is very hard to police. So it’s really more about protecting the players now, to educate them properly, so that the supply is cut off, essentially.”

Cas is not without its critics, and some say adding another layer to the disciplinary process – a bit like the DRA – encourages athletes to pursue their case if only in the hope that somewhere down the line they will get some clemency. And although it rarely entertains appeals against decisions on the field of play (“unless there is some evidence of corruption on the part of the referee, which is very unusual”), Cas has traditionally stood up for the athlete in other ways, such as rejecting lifetime bans in certain instances, for example when overturning the lifetime ban on British sprinter Dwain Chambers, so that he could compete in the London Olympics.

“I know UK Athletics are exploring that option again, trying to bring back lifetime bans. And certainly the threat that doping brings to the sport is so huge, it may be the only suitable response. So it might well come back to Cas, and maybe they are right to look at that again.

“The problem with say a two-year ban is that it’s essentially treated as a career break by athletes, to rest up. Then there’s the case of the Russians being banned from athletics right now. It’s difficult to see how they can turn it around in a few months, and be deemed clean enough to compete in Rio. Of course there will be huge political pressure, but there is also some scientific evidence to suggest athletes still get the benefit from doping even when the bans have expired. All that has to be taken into account too.”