--- title: "Mario Seidl v. ÖSV, NADA Austria \u0026 WADA Arbitral Award, St. Leonhard – Grödig, Austria; Four-year ineligibility imposed" sdDatePublished: "2026-08-28T13:23:00Z" source: "https://www.tas-cas.org/generated%5Cassets%5Clists%5Cfeb900ba-1137-4b78-a9ff-d68af7869087%5C9681%20corrected%20final%20Award%20(for%20publ.).pdf" topics: - name: "drug use in sport" identifier: "medtop:20001104" - name: "sports officiating" identifier: "medtop:20001325" - name: "sport organisation" identifier: "medtop:20001125" - name: "sport achievement" identifier: "medtop:20001301" locations: - "Espoo" - "Lausanne" - "Vienna" - "Innsbruck" - "Switzerland" - "Finland" - "Austria" - "Canada" --- Mario Seidl v. ÖSV, NADA Austria & WADA Arbitral Award, St. Leonhard – Grödig, Austria; Four-year ineligibility imposed CAS 2023/A/9681 Mario Seidl v. Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV) & NADA Austria & WADA ARBITRAL AWARD delivered by the COURT OF ARBITRATION FOR SPORT sitting in the following composition Sole Arbitrator: Ms Annett Rombach, Attorney-at-Law, Frankfurt am Main, Germany in the arbitration between Mr Mario Seidl, St. Leonhard – Grödig, Austria Represented by Mr Christian Keidel and Ms Franziska Wittersheim of Lentze Stopper Rechtsanwälte, Munich, Germany Appellant and Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV), Innsbruck, Austria First Respondent National Anti-Doping Agency of Austria (NADA Austria), Vienna, Austria Represented by Dr Stephan Netzle and Dr Mirjam Koller of Times Attorney AG, Zurich, Switzerland Second Respondent World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Montreal, Canada Represented by Mr Ross Wenzel, WADA General Counsel, and Messrs Nicolas Zbinden and Michael Kottman of Kellerhals Carrard, Lausanne, Switzerland Third Respondent CAS 2023/A/9681 Mario Seidl v. Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV) & NADA Austria & WADA - page 2 I. THE PARTIES 1. Mr Mario Seidl (the “Athlete” or the “Appellant”) is a 32-year-old Austrian skier specializing in the Nordic Combination. 2. The Österreichischer Skiverband (“ÖSV” or the “First Respondent”) is the competent national sports federation governing, inter alia, ski and snowboard sports as well as Nordic Combined. It is a member of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (the “FIS”). 3. The National Anti-Doping Agency of Austria (“NADA Austria” or the “Second Respondent”) is the national anti-doping organization for the country of Austria, which regulates the prevention and fight against doping in sport. 4. The World Anti-Doping Agency (“WADA” or the “Third Respondent”) is a private law foundation constituted under Swiss law in 1999 to promote and coordinate at international level the fight against doping in sport on the basis of the World Anti- Doping Code (the “WADC” or the “Code”). WADA has its registered seat in Lausanne, Switzerland, and its headquarters in Montreal, Canada. 5. The First Respondent, the Second Respondent, and the Third Respondent are collectively referred to as the “Respondents”. The Appellant and the Respondents are collectively referred to as the “Parties”. II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND 6. Below is a summary of the main relevant facts and allegations based on the Parties’ written submissions, pleadings and evidence adduced during these proceedings. Additional facts and allegations may be set out, where relevant, in connection with the legal discussion that follows. Although the Sole Arbitrator has considered all the facts, allegations, legal arguments and evidence submitted by the Parties in the present proceedings, this award (the “Award”) refers only to the submissions and evidence considered necessary to explain its reasoning. 7. The Athlete challenges a decision issued by the Independent Arbitration Commission (Unabhängige Schiedskommission, the “USK”) notified to him by e-mail on 11 May 2023 (the “Appealed Decision”). The Appealed Decision confirmed an earlier decision rendered by the Austrian Anti-Doping Legal Commission (Österreichische Anti-Doping Rechtskommission, the “ÖADR”), which imposed disciplinary sanctions against the Athlete (including, inter alia, a period of ineligibility of four years) for an alleged anti- doping rule violation (the “ADRV”). The factual background underlying the Appealed Decision can be summarized as follows: A. Factual Background 8. As a member of the National Testing Pool in Austria, the Athlete, since at least 2016, was subject to the testing system of the Athlete Biological Passport (“ABP”). The CAS 2023/A/9681 Mario Seidl v. Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV) & NADA Austria & WADA - page 3 fundamental principle of the ABP is to monitor selected biological variables over time that indirectly reveal the effects of doping, rather than attempting to detect the doping substance or method itself. 9. The Athlete has been charged with violating Article 2.2 of the FIS Anti-Doping Rules (version 2016; the “FIS ADR”): “Use or Attempted Use by an Athlete of a Prohibited Substance or a Prohibited Method”, based on an allegedly abnormal blood profile in 2016-17 and 2019. The evidence of the Athlete’s alleged ADRV in the matter at hand is based on a longitudinal analysis of his ABP. 10. Between 4 July 2013 and 19 December 2019, more than 40 blood samples were collected from the Athlete, as provided infra at para. 12 of this Award. Samples 19, 24 and 27 were deemed invalid and have not been considered for the analysis of the Athlete’s blood profile. The Athlete has been further challenging (including during these CAS proceedings) the validity of Samples 21 and 22, on which the Second Respondent’s ADRV case against the Athlete (partially) rests. The relevant background of sample collection for these samples is the following: • Sample 21 was collected in Ruka, Finland, in the morning of 24 November 2016 (at 8:49 am), under sample number 226880. In the evening of the same day, the sample was handed over, in a cooling box together with other samples, to Dr Kirchbichler of PWC, who stored the box at his hotel room until the next morning, when Sample 21 was scheduled to be sent by plane to the doping laboratory in Helsinki for analysis. In the morning of 25 November 2016, before the samples were prepared for transportation to the laboratory, the staff noticed that the temperature data logger was defective and had not recorded the temperature in the box. A new temperature logger was placed into the box. The service provider responsible for conducting the doping control, stated that “[i]t seems that there was a mistake with the data entry on the Chain of Custody.” It is undisputed that the temperature at which Sample 21 was stored had not been recorded for approximately 24 hours after sample collection. Nevertheless, Sample 21 was accepted for analysis by the doping laboratory. • Sample 22 was collected on 4 January 2017, at 6:32 am, under sample number 194073. The storage temperature for Sample 22 remained unrecorded for the first two hours, until the temperature logger started recording at appr. 8:32 am. Furthermore, the temperature data logger recorded an alarm for a duration of 7 hours 33 minutes, during which the storage temperature for Sample 22 was above 12.0°C, with a maximum temperature during this period of 15.1°C. Nevertheless, Sample 22 was accepted for analysis by the doping laboratory. 11. The WADA-accredited Athlete Passport Management Unit (“APMU”) in Seibersdorf, Austria (which operates under the supervision of NADA Austria), analysed the Athlete’s samples (including Samples 21 and 22) using the Adaptive Model, a statistical model that calculates whether the reported HGB (hemoglobin concentration), RET% (percentage of immature red blood cells – reticulocytes) and OFF-score (a combination of HGB and RET%) values fall within an athlete’s expected distribution. CAS 2023/A/9681 Mario Seidl v. Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV) & NADA Austria & WADA - page 4 12. The registered values for HGB, RET% and OFF-score in the Athlete’s respective samples were as follows (with the allegedly abnormal values being highlighted in yellow): No. Date of Sample HGB (g/dL) RET% OFF-score 1 4 July 2013 14.5 0.71 94.44 2 12 September 2013 15.0 0.62 102.76 3 30 October 2013 15.6 0.98 96.60 4 19 November 2013 15.8 1.03 97.10 5 28 November 2013 15.4 0.94 96.00 6 16 January 2014 15.0 0.85 94.68 7 26 March 2014 15.7 0.55 112.50 8 5 June 2014 14.7 0.00 90.00 9 7 August 2014 14.4 0.73 92.74 10 15 October 2014 14.0 0.80 86.33 11 28 April 2015 14.9 1.06 87.23 12 2 July 2015 15.5 0.83 100.34 13 3 September 2015 14.9 0.79 96.00 14 1 October 2015 14.7 0.92 89.45 15 24 November 2015 15.8 0.87 102.04 16 17 December 2015 15.2 0.75 100.04 17 28 January 2016 15.9 0.84 104.01 18 7 September 2016 15.5 0.96 96.21 19 5 October 2016 15.1 0.90 94.08 20 6 October 2016 15.1 1.12 88.00 21 24 November 2016 16.3 0.62 115.80 22 4 January 2017 16.8 0.88 111.72 23 20 January 2017 16.2 1.26 94.70 24 18 February 2017 14.2 0.76 89.69 25 22 February 2017 14.8 0.82 93.70 26 29 May 2017 14.7 1.06 85.23 27 7 August 2017 14.3 0.78 90.01 28 13 September 2017 14.8 0.68 98.52 CAS 2023/A/9681 Mario Seidl v. Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV) & NADA Austria & WADA - page 5 29 11 October 2017 15.4 0.87 98.04 30 22 November 2017 15.1 0.74 99.40 31 25 January 2018 15.3 0.96 94.00 32 12 July 2018 14.0 0.97 80.91 33 22 November 2018 15.3 0.70 102.80 34 20 December 2018 14.0 0.93 82.14 35 19 February 2019 14.3 1.48 70.01 36 25 February 2019 14.7 1.30 78.59 37 13 March 2019 15.7 1.15 92.66 38 1 April 2019 15.2 1.25 84.92 39 28 April 2019 16.3 0.92 105.45 40 17 July 2019 14.8 1.18 82.82 41 25 November 2019 15.4 1.66 76.70 42 10 December 2019 15.8 1.99 73.36 13. Upon the APMU’s request, the Athlete’s ABP was submitted to a panel of experts for review on an anonymous basis. The expert panel was comprised of three experts: Mr Ozren Jaksic, Ms Laura Garvican, Mr Jakob Mørkeberg (collectively the “Expert Panel”). 14. The Expert Panel examined the Athlete’s ABP (which was identified by the code BPZ235Q37) and produced a joint opinion dated 28 November 2019 (the “1st Joint Expert Opinion”). The Expert Panel noted that there were several “abnormalities” at 99.00% specificity and concluded that the likelihood that these abnormalities were the result of blood manipulation was high. The two main abnormalities were observed in Samples 20-23, collected between 6 October 2016 and 20 January 2017 (also referred to as the “2016-17 Sample Series”), and Samples 35-37, collected between 19 February 2019 and 13 March 2019 (also referred to as the “2019 Sample Series”). In relevant part, the 1st Joint Expert Opinion concluded the following: “In the automated analysis by the adaptive model, which determines whether fluctuations in the biomarkers of the Athlete Biological Passport are within the expected individual reference ranges for an athlete or not, the profile was flagged with a hemoglobin concentration (Hb) in sample 22 exceeding the upper 99% specificity level, and with a high percentage of reticulocytes (%ret) and low OFFscore in Sample 35 exceeding the upper and lower 99% specificity level, respectively. […] CAS 2023/A/9681 Mario Seidl v. Österreichischer Skiverband (ÖSV) & NADA Austria & WADA - page 6 Quality of hematological laboratory results All samples were scrutinized for their analytical details outlined in the LDPs and CAs. In the available documentation, there is no indication that any analytical or pre-analytical issues might have influenced the results in a way that would explain the abnormalities in the profile or alter the analytical data to disadvantage the athlete. The observation and hematological assessment of instrument reports, available for all valid samples, and quality of control data, recorded in the LDPs, confirms the absence of pre-analytical interferences, good analytical performance and inter-laboratory comparability of results. Conclusion Based on these facts and the information available to date, it is our opinion that, in the absence of an appropriate explanation, the likelihood of the abnormalities described above in the profile BPZ235Q37 being due to blood manipulation, namely the artificial increase of red cell mass using for example erythropoiesis stimulating substances, is high. On the contrary, the likelihood of environmental factors or a medical condition causin