World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) v. Atletico de Madrid S.A.D. & Player X

In this landmark award, a three-member CAS Panel sitting in Lausanne upheld WADA's appeal against the 12-month sanction imposed by the La Liga Integrity and Fair-Play Committee on Player X — a professional footballer at Atletico de Madrid — for committing three whereabouts failures within a 12-month rolling period, contrary to Article 2.4 of the 2021 World Anti-Doping Code as implemented in the RFEF Anti-Doping Rules.

The first-instance panel had accepted a generalised plea of exceptional circumstances under Article 10.6 and reduced the presumptive mandatory sanction of 24 months to 12 months. The CAS Panel found that approach to be legally erroneous and reinstated the mandatory minimum sanction in full.

The decision is significant for three principal reasons: it establishes a failure-specific causal nexus requirement under Article 10.6; it clarifies that the first-instance panel's characterisation of the new Code's mandatory minimum as merely "presumptive" was incorrect; and it confirms that personal hardship, absent a direct causal connection to each individual failure, cannot ground a reduction below the mandatory minimum.

Between June 2023 and April 2024, Player X accumulated three whereabouts failures within a 12-month rolling period, contrary to Article 2.4 of the 2021 WADA Code as implemented in the RFEF Anti-Doping Rules. The failures consisted of two Missed Tests and one Filing Failure, and were recorded by the Spanish Anti-Doping Agency (CELAD) as follows:

Following notification of the ADRV, CELAD referred the matter to the La Liga Integrity and Fair-Play Committee. The three-person first-instance panel convened on 11 July 2024 and issued its decision on 19 August 2024. The panel found the ADRV established but imposed a 12-month period of ineligibility, accepting the athlete's plea of exceptional circumstances under Article 10.6 on the basis of a generalised account of personal hardship during the relevant period, without requiring proof of a direct causal connection between the alleged circumstances and each individual failure.

The panel held that Article 10.2.3 of the 2021 Code creates a true mandatory minimum, not a presumptive starting point. The drafting history of the 2021 Code — and in particular the deliberate removal of the "up to two years" language that appeared in the previous version — demonstrates that the revision was intended to remove the discretion that first-instance panels had exercised to impose sanctions substantially below the level the Code contemplated as appropriate.

The panel rejected the first-instance panel's characterisation of the sanction as "presumptive", noting that this reading effectively reversed the direction of the 2021 reform. The only route below the mandatory minimum is through a finding of no fault or negligence (elimination) or no significant fault or negligence (reduction, subject to a floor of 12 months under Art. 10.6.1) — and both require a failure-specific causal analysis.

The panel confirmed, following CAS 2024/A/9812, that an athlete seeking to rely on exceptional circumstances must establish a direct causal connection between the circumstances relied upon and each individual failure for which a reduction is claimed. A general backdrop of personal adversity — however genuine and however sympathetically assessed — does not satisfy the threshold.

In the present case, the athlete's evidence established difficult personal circumstances during the 10-month period spanning the three failures, but did not explain why those circumstances caused the athlete to be absent from the declared hotel room on the night in question (Failure #3), or why the athlete failed to update the whereabouts slot in June 2023 (Failure #1). The panel found the causal nexus was absent for at least two of the three failures, which was sufficient to defeat the Article 10.6 plea in its entirety.