Six men and six women have been appointed to serve in the Brazilian city, with American Michael Lenard set to preside over the temporary court which will resolve disputes which may arise during next summer's Games.

Lenard will be assisted by the host nation's Justice Ellen Gracie Northfleet, who will serve as co-President, while six men and six women have been named as arbitrators.

The women are Australian Annabelle Bennett, Canadian/Slovakian Andrea Carska-Sheppard, Papua New Guinea's Catherine Davani, Costa Rica's Margarita Echeverria, Carol Roberts of Canada and South Korean Jinwon Park.

Meanwhile, the male arbitrators are Germany's Ulrich Haas, Britain's Mark Hovell, Francisco Mussnich of Brazil, Spain's José Juan Pinto, Mohamed Abdel Raouf of Egypt and Rabab Yasseen of Iraq/Switzerland.

A CAS statement said that gender equality had been taken into account for the first time as 50 per cent of athletes in Rio are expected to be female.

All of those appointed have been selected by the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS), an independent body under the aegis of which the CAS operates, and every region of the world has been considered.

In addition, the selected arbitrators are all either lawyers, judges or professors who have specialised in sports law and arbitration.

They are said to be independent of the parties who appear before the tribunal.

The CAS ad-hoc division, a special tribunal, has operated at each Summer and Winter Olympics since Atlanta 1996, as well as at other major sporting events including the Commonwealth Games, the FIFA World Cup and the Asian Games.

Participants in Rio who bring complaints to the CAS, the highest legal court for sporting disputes, will be able to have their cases heard within a time-frame consistent with the Olympic competition schedule.

Sixty-year-old Lenard is no stranger to the Olympic arena having been part of the American handball team which competed on home soil at Los Angeles 1984, where the country were knocked out in the group stage.

He has also held the positions of vice-president of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and vice-chairman of the USOC Athletes' Commission.

The location of the office in Rio, which will be headed by the CAS Secretary General Matthieu Reeb, together with the dates and times of its operations, will be announced at a later date.

At last year's Winter Olympics in Sochi, the ad-hoc division presided over cases including Austrian freestyle skier Daniela Bauer's appeal against her non-selection in the Russian city.

Her case was eventually dismissed, as was that of Argentina's aerials specialist Clyde Getty.



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September 2014: CAS appoints Singapore barrister as head of ad hoc division for Asian Games
February 2014: Austrian freestyle skier Bauer appeals to CAS after not being selected for Sochi 2014
February 2014: Argentinian veteran Getty, 52, loses CAS appeal to compete at Sochi 2014