The Canadian women's football team were one of the favourites at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games having won gold in Tokyo 2020 but their hopes of retaining their title took a huge hit when on Saturday they were deducted six crucial points and fined 200,000 Swiss francs (€210,000) for a spying scandal. 

The New Zealand women's football team reported having seen a drone over their closed practice sessions in Saint-Étienne last week days before they were scheduled to face Canada at the Olympics.

French authorities were then alerted and managed to trace the unauthorised drone back to Joseph Lombardi, a technical analyst working for Canada Soccer.

Both Lombardi and assistant coach Jasmine Mander, who received the espionage report, were consequently expelled from the games and handed one-year bans with the former also receiving an eight-month suspended prison sentence for being the chief culprit.

On Monday, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canada Soccer then launched an appeal with the Ad hoc Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) hoping to downsize the deduction or cancel it altogether while accepting the bans on the sanctions for the two staff members as well as a more recent year-long ban for coach Beverly Priestman.

The Swiss-based body reviewed the punishment and having gone through a hearing with a panel of arbitrators Tuesday, today decided to uphold the deduction. 

With two 2-1 wins against New Zealand and France, Canada would find themselves on six points comfortably at the top of Group A and likely heading to the Quarter-Finals. With the deduction sustained they now sit third with zero points and must secure a win against Colombia at 20:00 (21:00 CEST) Wednesday night. 

Host nation France will take on New Zealand in the other Wednesday night fixture.