I guess, given our litigious world, it was bound to happen.

After it was found that Spain’s women’s field hockey team had indeed won the Baku qualifier over host Azerbaijan, despite having one of its players commit a minor doping violation, the Azerbaijanis filed a protest with the Court for Arbitration for Sport.

Predictably, the CAS denied the appeal today and Spain will indeed be allowed to compete.

I am amazed that there was even an attempt an appeal of the recent decision by FIH regarding Spain’s status. First of all, the appeal was, in my opinion, a cynical back-door way into the Olympics without having earned it on the pitch.

Second, given the strict (and sometimes overweening) doping laws put into force by the World Anti-Doping Agency, you would have thought that, if the second (still-unnamed) Spanish player had anything in her body that was out of sorts, WADA would have found it a long time ago.

Finally, the attempt by Azerbaijan to overturn the FIH ruling smacks of the worst ideals of sportsmanship. It’s as if the national governing body of the sport in Azerbaijan is trying to write an alternate reality of some sort. And, similar to the bizarre case of Floyd Landis, that didn’t work, either.