The world’s leading sports arbitrator has ended the Olympic dream for South Sudan’s highest-ranked 200m sprinter Mangar Chuot.
The 26-year-old sprinter, who narrowly missed out on automatically qualifying for the games, had taken the South Sudan Olympic Committee to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over its decision to exclude him from the team.
He had been chosen to compete by the country’s athletics federation but was excluded by the Olympic committee.
The Perth-based refugee, who is also an Australian 2014 200m title holder, believed it was a breach of the Olympic charter.
His Brazilian lawyers and had been confident they would win.
"I think the idea is to fulfill the Olympic charter,” said one of his lawyers Lucas Mendes shortly after the hearing on Thursday.
“More than this, it's to fulfill the Olympic spirit.
"When one committee is bending the rules, it's taking decisions not based on the merits or the qualities of the athletes, we are actually putting aside the Olympic spirit as a whole and we are not qualifying the best athletes.”
Chuot’s personal best of 20.76 seconds is fractionally slower than the time needed to automatically qualify for the games.
The committee chose marathon runner Guor Marial, 1500m runner Santino Kenyi and 19-year-old sprinter Margret Rumat Rumar Hassan in the women’s 200m.
MORE ABOUT THE CASE OF MANGAR CHUOT
South Sudan Olympic committee taken to Court of Sport Arbitration
The court heard the nation's Olympic committee chose Hassan because she had featured in an Olympic-themed commercial for electronics giant Samsung.
Hassan ran nearly one second slower than countrywoman Viola Lado at the recent African Championships.
Her commercial, which features her wearing an Olympic running suit and being cheered on by her country, was made several months before she was selected for the Olympic team. It has been viewed more than 22 million times on YouTube.
“All the evidence shows that they made decisions based on contractual matters,” Mr Mendes said.
“They made decisions way before the athletes were actually appointed to participate in Rio 2016."
The country’s Olympic Committee secretary general Tong Chor Malek Deran told SBS that Hassan had been chosen because she had a contract with Samsung and she had a “story" to complete.
Samsung denied influencing the selection of Hassan, but the Olympic sponsor has not answered questions about whether the Olympic committee was paid for Hassan’s services.
Dr Tong said he was not.
The Court only took a few hours before making its decision to dismiss Chuot’s case. The full decision will be released later on Thursday Brazilian time.
The refusal is deeply personal for Chuot who had not only trained for years for the opportunity, but had also been intending to run in his father’s honour.
His father Makur Chuot was killed in the struggle to gain independence for South Sudan.
Chuot and his coach Lindsay Bunn are now weighing up their futures in the athletics field.
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