CAS Olympic Selection Appeal Decision - 28 April

CAS Olympic Selection Appeal Decision - 28 April

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has released its reason behind Yachting New Zealands appeal being upheld. Yachting New Zealand are relieved to see the reasoning released by CAS and to find that they found no fault of Yachting New Zealand’s Olympic Team selection panel. In their view "the approach adopted by the panel was an appropriate one and conformed with the criteria". The decision highlighted that the earlier the Sports Disputes Tribunal's criticism of the selectors was in the opinion of CAS "fatally flawed."

In the decision released last night CAS noted "the Tribunal has trespassed in to the forbidden field of reviewing the decisions of the panel on the merits as opposed to determining whether the nomination panel as a matter of law breached the criteria." CAS went on to note "the Tribunals reasoning seems to substitute its own views of the merits of the assessment of those results for that of the panel."

Yachting New Zealand’s Chief Executive Simon Wickham comments, "We are pleased that CAS have supported Yachting New Zealands view that our expert panel of selectors properly implemented the appropriate nomination criteria and that the decisions originally made were correct.
The veracity of the Court of Arbitration for Sport's report clearly justifies the Board and Yachting New Zealands decision to appeal the Sports Disputes Tribunals findings, to ensure the right of the selectors to exercise their expert judgement in determining selections for the Olympic Games.
We believed at the time and still believe that conclusions reached by the Sports Disputes Tribunal were unacceptable and untenable.
It is deeply regrettable that we had to go to such lengths to have our beliefs confirmed."

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