Yachting: Olympic nomination ruling to be appealed

By DAVID LEGGAT

Yachting New Zealand is to appeal to world sport's highest disputes body over the quashing of two of its Olympic nominations.

It has decided to appeal to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn two decisions by the New Zealand Sports Disputes Tribunal last week, which has thrown a spanner in its selection process for the Athens Olympic Games.

It will be the fifth time a New Zealand case has gone to the court and the first since swimmer Trent Bray appealed against a four-year doping ban in 2001. It was partially upheld, being reduced to two years.

"The impact [of the tribunal decisions] is it significantly changes the way we've selected people over the last 40 years and as arguably the leading medal-winning sport we feel we've done a pretty responsible job of selection in the past," said YNZ chief executive Simon Wickham last night.

Yachting's submissions must be with the court by Friday, and the case is likely to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. Wickham said the case had to be argued either on points of law or must demonstrate that fair and natural justice was not followed in the tribunal.

The tribunal allowed appeals by Laser sailor Andrew Murdoch and 470 crew Simon Cooke and Alastair Gair over the nominations of Hamish Pepper, and Andrew Brown and Jamie Hunt, respectively, for Athens.

Although Pepper and Brown and Hunt had won their national Olympic trials at Torbay in January, the tribunal found insufficient grounds to justify another part of the nomination criteria, that they had demonstrated the capability of achieving a top-10 finish in Athens.

It directed that the top three placegetters in the Laser class at Torbay should compete at the world championships in Turkey in May and suggested a trip to the world championships in Croatia in May was called for in the case of the top three 470 finishers at the Olympic trial.

Wickham said YNZ decided to appeal "on review and reflection of the decision and the impact it was going to have". The decisions had "surprised and staggered" YNZ.

Four New Zealanders are court arbitrators - former chief justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, former High Court judges Sir John Jeffries and David Williams, QC, and Wellington barrister and former New Zealand Olympic Committee member Tim Castle.

The hearing could be heard in New Zealand and the three-person panel could be entirely made up of New Zealanders. The decision would be binding. If it found in favour of YNZ, the association's original selections would stand.

WHO, WHAT, WHY

The Court of Arbitration for Sport was established in 1984 as an independent body to help settle sports-related disputes through arbitration or mediation.

It has 150 arbitrators from 55 countries. It hears about 50 cases a year.

Although its head office is in Lausanne, Switzerland, it has two other offices, in Sydney and New York.

To start the arbitration process, a party must request a hearing after having exhausted all internal avenues to resolve the dispute.

The court must make its decision within four months of the statement of appeal having been lodged. In urgent cases it can order interim measures or suspend the execution of the decision being appealed against.