Marketa Vondrousova received a 48-month suspension for refusing an anti-doping test — a penalty journalist Jon Wertheim calls disproportionate. Debate over the sanction has already begun in anti-doping circles before any formal appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Wertheim drew a direct parallel to illustrate the imbalance: a drunk-driving conviction with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 typically carries three to nine months in prison, while refusing an anti-doping test brings 48 months of banishment. For him, the gap exposes a structural flaw in how the rules apply the principle of proportionality.

Inverted incentive in current rules

Wertheim’s sharpest argument targets a side effect of the current framework. An athlete who submits a sample that returns a positive result and offers a plausible explanation tends to receive a smaller penalty than one who simply refuses to provide a sample at all. He contends that dynamic signals the penalty structure needs recalibration.

Wertheim acknowledged that some punishment is necessary — anti-doping systems depend on athlete cooperation, and a refusal cannot go without consequence. His position is not that Vondrousova should go unpunished, but that 48 months does not bear a reasonable relationship to the act committed. He assessed that the ban is unlikely to reach CAS without a reduction. No formal appeal date has been announced.