Lausanne (AFP)

Chinese swimmer Sun Yang ended his two-day hearing on Thursday before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which must decide whether or not he will be at the Tokyo Olympics after an incredible doping case, and should be fixed on his fate by "end of June".

"The hearing is over on schedule. The date of the decision is not yet known, but it will be by the end of June at the latest," a spokesperson for the sports court told AFP. .

Suspended for eight years by the CAS in February 2020 in the same file, openly hated by his rivals, the triple Olympic champion was considered a few months ago as finished for the high level.

But in an unprecedented twist, the Swiss Federal Court in December 2020 quashed his conviction, sanctioning the "partiality" of an Italian CAS arbitrator after a series of "extremely violent" and anti-Chinese tweets.

The 29-year-old swimmer was therefore granted a final chance to justify the hammering of a vial of his blood, during an unexpected doping control in 2018.

Nothing has filtered from its audience, organized since Tuesday by videoconference and closed to the media, unlike the previous one, held in public.

The stake is clear: the Chinese Swimming Federation has specified that the athletes titled at the 2019 Worlds in Gwangju would be "automatically qualified" for the Tokyo Games (July 23-August 8).

Sun Yang, who then won two world titles in the 200m and 400m freestyle, meets these criteria, even if his physical level and the state of his preparation remain a mystery.

- First suspension -

The only son of a family of athletes, the swimmer had revealed himself to the general public during the 2011 Shanghai World Championships: at 19, he smashed the world record in the 1,500 meters freestyle, which he has since improved and still holds, and had also won the 800 meters.

Adored in his country and muse of the big brands, he added three Olympic gold medals to his record, in London-2012 (400 m and 1,500 m freestyle), then Rio-2016 (200 m), and has a total of eleven world titles.

But in 2014 and in the greatest secrecy, he was suspended for three months for testing positive for a stimulant (trimetazidine), a sanction made public long after she was served.

Controlled at his home in September 2018, Sun Yang had destroyed a blood sample with a hammer, arguing in his defense that the inspectors had not produced "documents proving their identity".

The International Swimming Federation (Fina) had yet cleared the swimmer due to a defect in form - before being disowned by the CAS in its decision of 2020 -, allowing him to appear at the Worlds-2019, to the dismay of some opponents.

Medalists alongside him in the 400m and 200m respectively, Australian Mack Horton refused to stand on the podium, while Briton Duncan Scott refused to shake his hand.

© 2021 AFP