NADA seeks longer ban for Mario, SV Hamburg player

Last updated: 2023/04/06 at 11:57 AM

starconnect Published 6 April 2023

Mario Viscovic plays soccer for SV Hamburg, a second division side

Professional soccer player from second-division club Hamburger SV Mario Vuskovic has taken his seat for the third hearing before the Sports Court of the German Football Association (DFB). The German Football Association's sports court has banned Vuskovic of second-division club Hamburger SV for two years for epo doping. Photo: Arne Dedert/dpa

Emmanuel Thomas, with reports from DPA l Thursday, April 6, 2023

HAMBURG – Germany’s Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) said on Tuesday it has appealed against a two-year doping ban for SV Hamburg footballer Mario Vuskovic because it seeks a longer ban.

Vuskovic tested positive for the forbidden blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) in September and was last week banned for two years by the sports court of the German Football Federation (DFB).

The maximum sanction is a four-year ban, and the NADA said it wants Vuskovic banned for this period via their appeal.

Second-division Hamburg have said they will also appeal the ruling at the DFB federal court in a case in which Vuskovic has protested his innocence, saying: “I will not let this break me, I will fight to the end with everything I have to prove the truth.”

The case had led to a general debate on the decades-long practised test method for EPO.

Four experts engaged by SV Hamburg had deemed the test result false-positive. The head of the Kreischa lab, which is accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), had said Vuskovic’s sample was exactly “like a positive sample” would look like.

WADA has been using a method to check by eye whether a sample is positive or not for more than 20 years and which has been questioned repeatedly. Almost all other doping substances are detected by the mass spectrometricy analytical tool method.

TAGGED: Mario Vuskovic