Marathon champ Balciunaite fights doping ban

Balciunaite has been left off the list of athletes for the London 2012 Olympics Lithuania\'s disgraced European women\'s marathon champion, Zivile Balciunaite, has launched a legal challenge to her two-year competition ban for doping, her lawyer said on Friday.
\"We have submitted an appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport because we believe the decision was unfair,\" Aivaras Zilvinskas told AFP in Lithuania\'s capital Vilnius.
Zilvinskas said the appeal to the Swiss-based court challenged the laboratory findings, as well as case procedure in Lithuania, on the grounds that Balciunaite was deprived of the right to defend herself effectively.

Lithuania\'s athletics federation on April 5 imposed a two-year competition ban.
The penalty came after Balcuinaite\'s urine sample -- taken after her European title win in Barcelona in July 2010 -- revealed abnormal levels in the ratio between the male sex hormone testosterone and epitestosterone.
Both testosterone and epitestosterone occur naturally in women but an increased level of testosterone can indicate it has been administered artificially.
Balciunaite, 32, denied the doping allegations and claimed the results could be explained by Duphaston, a drug prescribed by her gynaecologist.

In December, the Lithuanian federation had said that there was insufficient evidence to impose a ban.
However, it said at the time, Balciunaite refused to have her sample tested by an independent laboratory, and that prevented the federation from helping clear her name.
Ahead of a decision in her case, Balciunaite was in January left off Lithuania\'s list of athletes for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.