Suspended Phonak rider Tyler Hamilton may to keep the gold medal he won in the individual time trial at the Athens Olympics after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Tuesday dismissed an appeal filed by the Russian Olympic Committee on behalf of silver medalist Viatcheslav Ekimov. Hamilton won the time-trial event in Athens but failed a blood-doping test. Hamilton’s B sample – needed to confirm the positive – was destroyed after laboratory staff froze it, making it impossible to test the red blood cells in the sample.

That led the Russian Olympic Committee to appeal to the International Olympic Committee, which in September 2004 deemed Hamilton's test non-conclusive and confirmed his victory.

Ekimov and the ROC took the case to CAS a month later but on Tuesday a three-man panel deemed that according to CAS rules they had no standing to lodge an appeal.

"An appeal can be filed to CAS only by the athlete who is the subject of the decision being appealed from, by the IOC, by the relevant International Federation or anti-doping organization and by WADA," said a statement from CAS.

"As a consequence, Tyler Hamilton can retain the gold medal he won at the time-trial event in Athens and the ranking of this race is definitively confirmed."

The case was delayed several months pending another Hamilton case at CAS where the former Phonak rider was appealing his suspension for the same blood-doping offense at the 2004 Vuelta a España, just a month after his Olympic victory.

The American had appealed that the testing procedure was unreliable but CAS rejected that and upheld Hamilton's two-year suspension by the UCI, which ends on September 22.