Anthony West has been handed a retroactive 18 month ban after being found guilty of taking an illegal substance. The Australian failed an anti-doping test at the 2012 French Grand Prix with his urine sample containing samples of banned stimulant Methylhexaneamine but WADA successfully appealed the FIM International Disciplinary Court’s decision at to suspend West for a month and disqualify him from the French GP at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, leading to the increased sentence.
West served the one month ban at the end of 2012, missing the season finale in Valencia, but his punishment has now been increased although due to “the considerable delay in the conduct of the case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the CAS Panel decided to set the start of the suspension retroactively at 20 May 2012” with the month’s suspension already served deducted from the sentence.
As a result, all of West’s results from May 20th 2012 to October 19th 2013 have been invalidated and the 2012 and 2013 Moto2 World Championship results will be modified accordingly. The changes do not affect the championship victories of Marc Marquez and Pol Espargaro in the season’s concerned but British rider Gino Rea will now inherit West’s second place from Malaysia last year with Hafizh Syahrin now promoted into a podium position, the first of his career.
