The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld an appeal by Japanese race walker Koki Ikeda against World Athletics, overturning a four-year sanction imposed by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) in February 2025. The 28-year-old Tokyo Olympic silver medallist was provisionally suspended in November 2024 after World Athletics alleged blood manipulation based on abnormalities in his Athlete Biological Passport. Ikeda challenged the ruling at CAS in March 2025, and a panel in Lausanne heard the case in May. While the panel accepted that several readings in Ikeda’s biological profile were abnormal, it concluded there was a reasonable non-doping explanation for the findings, supported by substantial medical and expert evidence that was not available during the initial proceedings. The four-year sanction was overturned, and Ikeda's competitive results between June 20, 2023 and November 1, 2024, which had been disqualified, are no longer affected.
In a separate case announced the same day, the AIU suspended Ethiopian marathon runner Ruti Aga for six years. The 32-year-old, winner of the 2019 Tokyo Marathon, tested positive for the prohibited steroid methylprednisolone after winning a half marathon in China in March. The AIU found that Aga had misled investigators during an interview and submitted a fake prescription to justify her use of the substance, adding four years to an initial two-year ban for the positive test. Aga has been provisionally suspended since September 10, with the ban running from that date.