International Weightlifting Federation v. Giorbelidze & GADA

Georgian weightlifters Gurami Giorbelidze and Revaz Davitadze tested positive for ostarine, an anabolic agent, in out-of-competition samples collected at a training base in Bakuriani, Georgia, in July and August 2023. A third weightlifter, Kakhi Asanidze, and two Georgian wrestlers, Dato Piruzashvili and Nika Kentchadze, tested positive for the same substance from the same alleged incident, generating five closely related cases in total across the two sports, all eventually heard by the same Sole Arbitrator. On 20 June 2024, the Tbilisi City Court convicted an individual named as Mr Gogava of intentionally adding the substance to the athletes' drinking water. On 26 August 2024, the Georgian Anti-Doping Agency (GADA), acting as first-instance decision-maker, accepted the sabotage theory for Giorbelidze and Davitadze, found they bore no fault or negligence, and imposed no period of ineligibility — a decision that let Davitadze go on to win a silver medal at the 2024 World Weightlifting Championships while the matter remained under appeal. The International Testing Agency, on behalf of the International Weightlifting Federation, appealed GADA's decision on 25 October 2024, and WADA filed its own separate appeal on 8 November 2024, both naming GADA and the athletes as respondents and seeking the full four-year ban.

CAS rejected the sabotage defence. The Sole Arbitrator found the Tbilisi City Court judgment lacked the factual investigation necessary to support the sabotage theory as applied to these particular athletes' positive tests, and identified specific credibility problems with Gogava's own testimony: he could not explain memory gaps about when he arrived in Georgia after allegedly procuring the ostarine in Moscow, could not account for why he only came forward months after the alleged sabotage, and gave an account of his supposed motive — to harm two other named individuals rather than the athletes he actually poisoned — that the Arbitrator found unconvincing. The Panel held that CAS proceedings owe no deference to a prior domestic court judgment and must weigh its probative value independently, notwithstanding the athletes' argument that the criminal conviction should be treated as effectively irrebuttable evidence discharging their burden under the anti-doping rules.

Both the ITA/IWF and WADA appeals were upheld, and a four-year period of ineligibility was imposed on each athlete, running from 30 September 2025 with credit for time already served under provisional suspension; a virtually identical outcome was reached in the parallel wrestling cases, heard by the same Arbitrator in June 2025. Asanidze's own individual case remained pending separately at the time of the Giorbelidze/Davitadze decision. The ruling drew strong public criticism from within Georgian weightlifting itself: Lasha Talakhadze, a triple Olympic champion and president of the Georgian Weightlifting Federation, publicly defended the athletes and called it "incomprehensible" that a criminal conviction for sabotage had effectively been set aside, describing the toll the years-long saga had taken on the national team.

The case reinforces a theme visible across several other matters in this library: an unusual or dramatic defence to a doping charge — whether contamination or, here, outright sabotage — needs real, case-specific evidentiary support to succeed before CAS, not simply a plausible narrative backed by a favourable ruling from another forum, however emotionally compelling that other forum's finding may be to the athletes and their national federation.