Court upholds two-year anti-doping ban for Olympic bronze medallist Ana Bărbosu

The ruling

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has upheld a two-year ban for Romanian gymnast Ana Bărbosu, who won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics, over three whereabouts failures recorded between September and December 2025. The decision was announced on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, by the CAS anti-doping division. The ban runs from 5 May 2026, the date she was provisionally suspended, and credit is given for the time she has already served. Bărbosu, 20 according to AP and the BBC, had appealed the case to CAS. The New York Times reports that she is now a sophomore at Stanford.

How the case was built

The International Testing Agency (ITA), which runs the anti-doping programme for World Gymnastics, recorded the three failures in the period from September to December 2025. Athletes in the testing pool must report where they are and set a 60-minute daily window for unannounced tests, and three failures within 12 months count as a violation even without a positive test. Romanian outlets say the ITA notified her in spring 2026 and that she rejected the proposed sanction. A single arbitrator heard the case on 20 August 2026 and concluded that all three failures had been recorded correctly. The ITA told Stirile ProTV that it would make no further comment on the case.

Her results and the timing of the ban

The panel did not accept the request to strip her results, so the competitive results she posted from December 2025 onward still stand. AP reports that those results had been disqualified before the ruling. The ban ends on 4 May 2028, and Mediafax reports that she could return to competition on 5 May 2028. Libertatea notes that the end date falls before the Los Angeles Olympics, which run from 14 to 30 July 2028. The decision can be challenged at the CAS Appeals Division by the athlete, World Gymnastics, the ITA, WADA or Romania's national anti-doping agency, according to Stirile ProTV.

The separate Paris medal case

A second CAS case concerns the women's floor final at the Paris 2024 Games. The BBC reports that the US team requested an inquiry into Jordan Chiles' score, which gave Chiles the bronze in place of Bărbosu. CAS later upheld a complaint from the Romanian Olympic Committee that the American team had taken too long to make the request, and Bărbosu's bronze was reinstated. AP's account says the medal was first awarded to Chiles and later revoked, a version that differs from the BBC and SAPO reports. The Swiss Federal Tribunal sent the case back to CAS in February 2026, and the next hearing will not take place before May 2027.