Lithuania’s disgraced European women’s marathon champion, Zivile Balciunaite, has launched a legal challenge to her two-year competition ban for doping.

“We have submitted an appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport because we believe the decision was unfair,” Aivaras Zilvinskas told AFP in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius.

Zilvinskas said the appeal to the CAS challenged the laboratory findings, as well as case procedure in Lithuania, on the grounds that Balciunaite was deprived of the right to defend herself effectively.

Lithuania’s athletics federation on April 5 imposed a two-year competition ban.

The ban came after Balcuinaite’s urine sample − taken after her Euro title win in Barcelona in 2010 − revealed abnormal levels in the ratio between the male sex hormone testosterone and epitestosterone.

Balciunaite, 32, denied the doping allegations and claimed the results could be explained by Duphaston, a drug prescribed by her gynaecologist.

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