MONACO, April 3: Italian lawyer Mino Auletta was elected president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday, beating out former World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chief Dick Pound.

Auletta, who has been acting president of CAS, received a majority of the votes at a meeting of the 19 members of the court’s governing body in Monaco.

CAS did not provide a breakdown of the results, but at least 10 votes were needed to win.

Auletta, who will1 oversee the appointment of arbitrators for the sports world’s top appeals body, also defeated Swiss lawyer Robert Briner and Sweden’s Gunnar Werner to get the job.

“It wasn’t a competition,” Auletta by telephone after the vote. “It was a chance for us to get to know each other.”

The 66-year-old Italian has been acting president since the death of Senegalese judge Keba Mbaye last year. He will now fill the role until the end of Mbaye’s term in 2010, after which CAS will elect a president for a full four-year term.

Pound, a Canadian lawyer and senior member of the International Olympic Committee, drew fire recently for his outspoken style. The International Cycling Union announced last month that it is suing Pound over comments he made about doping in the sport — a move which may have undermined his CAS candidacy.

UCI president Pat McQuaid welcomed Thursday’s result and said he looked forward to working with Auletta.

“We will fight doping as hard as we can, we just hope that we end up with less and less resorting to CAS in actual fact,” McQuaid said.

Pound, who finished second in the vote, said he would remain on the court’s governing board.

The CAS president is required to be impartial in his oversight of the nearly 300 arbitrators who rule on about 200 disputes every year.

The CAS presidency had been vacant since the death of 82-year-old Mbaye, who had been the body’s only president since its creation in 1984.

Auletta said the most important case for CAS in coming months will be the appeal of double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius of South Africa.

“It’s far more important than doping issues,” Auletta said.

Pistorius is seeking to overturn a ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations that makes him ineligible to compete at the Beijing Olympics or any other able-bodied competition. The IAAF says his prosthetic racing limbs give him a clear competitive advantage.

Another high-profile case before CAS is that of Olympic 100-meter champion Justin Gatlin, who is appealing a four-year doping ban. CAS secretary-general Matthieu Reeb said the hearing will be held on May 28 and 29 in New York.—AP