Lee banned eight months, eligible to play from May 1

PUTRAJAYA: Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaludin announced that national badminton player Datuk Lee Chong Wei has been served with an eight-month ban for failing a drug test.
"However, the sentence will be backdated from Aug 30, 2014 and Lee will be eligible to play in competitions from May 1, 2015. Lee will compete in the Sudirman Cup in Dongguan from May 10-17 and the Sea Games in Singapore in June," Khairy told the media.
Khairy added that the Badminton World Federation (BWF) believes that Lee failed the doping test due to a possibility of dexamethasone contamination in the cordyceps capsules that he was consuming.
"Lee has been taking this supplement for the past 8 years which he had obtained from the same source with no issues. We believe the gelatin capsule, the vessel of the supplement may have been contaminated with dexamethasone somehow," Khairy said.
Khairy explained that after hearing the arguments and evidence put forward by Lee's legal team at the hearing in the Netherlands, BWF issued a statement which Khairy read out: "The panel is convinced this is not a case of doping with intent to cheat. However, the panel found that Lee had been 'negligent', but with the degree of negligence being 'rather light' as 'he did not realise he had ingested a Specified Substance (Dexamethasone)'."
That conclusion led to a sanction of eight months’ ineligibility.
The minister reiterated BWF's stand that Lee did not knowingly ingest Dexamethasone and applauded the measures taken by Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) and Lee's legal counsel Mike Morgan Sports in championing Lee's case.
"With this, I would like to welcome our national shuttler Lee Chong Wei to the courts and we are glad he would be able to fulfill his dreams of participating in the 2016 Olympic Games."
Meanwhile, Lee said he was grateful to be back "in court" in four more days.
"I would like to thank my family, friends and supporters who believed in me and stood by me. But my most heartfelt thanks would be to Khairy and BAM for standing by me and ensuring I was given a fair trial throughout the hearing," Lee told the media.