TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Olympic race walking silver medalist Koki Ikeda received a four-year ban Friday for using or attempting to use a banned drug and may appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Athletics Integrity Unit earlier announced the ban on the 26-year-old Japanese athlete, who was provisionally suspended for a doping rule violation in November. Ikeda denied the charge and the case was sent to an appeals tribunal.

A source at his corporate athletics team said he is looking to appeal the ban with the CAS.

"I have never doped, so I am utterly disappointed," Ikeda said in a statement from his team. "I have been wrongly accused and I cannot make any sense of it."

The Shizuoka Prefecture native achieved the best-ever Olympic result by a Japanese race walker when he finished second in the men's 20-kilometer event at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

He was runner-up again at the 2022 world championships and placed seventh at the Paris Olympics this past summer.

A 2023 blood test showed changes in his hemoglobin and other values that exceeded the limit when compared with his biological passport, which stores his blood data.

Ikeda will not be allowed to contest the national championships on Feb. 16, and his competitive results from June 20, 2023, have been disqualified.