GENEVA - The Court of Arbitration of Sport opened a full week of appeal hearings Monday for 39 Russian athletes disqualified from the 2014 Sochi Olympics for taking part in a state-backed doping program.
Some athletes hope to overturn their Olympic life bans and clear their names to compete at the Pyeongchang Games, which open Feb. 9 in South Korea.
Verdicts are not expected to be delivered before Jan. 30 or 31, CAS secretary general Matthieu Reeb said, acknowledging that it would be at least two days after the official deadline for Olympic entries on Sunday.
Two key prosecution witnesses, Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov and World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren, are set to testify by video or telephone link to the closed-door hearings at a conference centre.
Rodchenkov, the former director of the Moscow and Sochi anti-doping laboratories, is now living as a protected witness in the United States.
Reeb said both men would each give evidence in a single block with "no repeated testimonies" for individual athlete hearings.
