Determing the penalty of athlete’s inegilability for competition because of doping - the legal significance of Marin Čilić case

Increasing the physical ability by adding pharmacological agents is the old human "obsession". The athletes use drugs for variety of reasons. However, regardless of the reasons, the use of doping agents is opposite to the fundamental values and spirit of sport. Undoubtedly, intensified discussion on penalties for the persons responsible for doping comes as a consequence of commercialisation and professionalisation in sport. In case of athletes, the ban from sport competition has de facto equal effects as temporary suspension of professional activity, which makes the life ban equal to the permanent prohibition from exercising certain professional activity with all the following legal consequences (e. g. the loss of sponsorship rights). Then, it is not surprising that the athletes are ready to use all the available legal instruments in order to protect themselves from negative consequences of doping and that, on the other hand, the courts and responsible authorities of sport associations are ready to deal more decisively with the doping cases imposing strict sanctions. In this paper, the author considers the criteria from the World Anti-Doping Code and International Tennis Federation Anti-Doping Programme for imposing the sanction of ban from participation in sports competition for using the forbidden doping agents, especially stressing how the case of tennis player Marin Čilić served for understanding of those criteria. It is pointed out in the paper that, by purpose or by chance, the proceedings of the ITF Anti-Doping Independent Tribunal and the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Laussane served to the CAS to determine more precisely the mechanism and criteria for imposing the sanction of ban from competition when the period of suspension for comitting the alleged violation of certain anti-doping rule is from 0 months to 24 months