WADA to launch CAS appeal

The World Anti-Doping Agency will launch an appeal with the top sports court should it fail to agree with FIFA on their controversial anti-doping regulations, WADA chief Dick Pound said yesterday.

WADA and world soccer's governing body FIFA have already requested advice from the Court of Arbitration for Sport about FIFA's drugs policy which foresees more lenient sentences for offenders.

"It is in their disciplinary rules where we think they have not gone far enough," Pound told reporters ahead of the Turin Winter Olympics.

FIFA has yet to fully sign up to the WADA code, the main sticking point being its unwillingness to agree that a first offence by a player should automatically attract a two-year ban.

Pound said the CAS opinion should come "virtually any day now." He said should FIFA insist on keeping its code unchanged despite an adverse CAS opinion, "we will go back to CAS with an appeal."

The court is the final arbiter in sporting cases. Pound has said in the past any international federation who does not agree to the WADA code risks being thrown out of the Olympic Games.

FIFA insists every doping case should be dealt with on its individual merits and blanket bans are unreliable under Swiss law.