HANGZHOU, China, Dec. 11-- The key witness in the Sun Yang case has explained why he was absent from a public hearing, saying that he was willing to give testimony but nobody contacted him. "I told them I would like to give my testimony through telephone or video conference as they suggested. I was ready; however, nobody had ever contacted me," said the witness on Wednesday who asked Xinhua not to be named. "I felt like they did not seriously expect me to show up and give my words in the court. Maybe they just asked me in a casual way," he added. The witness, one of the three among three doping control testers from the international testing company IDTM in Sun Yang case, said he had never been trained as a tester. "I am a construction worker. My daily job is doing the construction work at construction sites. I am so busy that I don't have time to travel to Switzerland to attend the public hearing. No one had ever talked about doping control to me, not to mention such kind of training. It is unnecessary for me." The witness said he had provided his statement in a written letter in Chinese during mid-October, introducing what he knew and experienced in that night. "It was the first time someone from the international organization asked me about this matter over the past one year. I just got to know this case was upgraded to an international appeal," the witness said. Three-time Olympic champion Sun Yang declared his innocence at a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) public hearing held in Montreux, Switzerland on November 15, after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed against him and swimming world governing body FINA over FINA's previous decision in favor of Sun on his alleged anti-doping rule violations. |