The article argues that athletes' right to take decisions from sports governing bodies and specialized sporting bodies to court for judicial review and redress is a cornerstone of the ‘Bosnian legacy’ which can be said to have been produced by the CJEU (then ECJ) Bosnian ruling. The article makes an empirically grounded assessment of this legacy by drawing on the four contributions made by the EU to the revision of the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) 2009 (2011–2013) to show how the EU used this opportunity to defend athletes' right to challenge sporting decisions in court, and how the new post-Lisbon sports policy competence granted in Article 165 TFEU (a merely supporting and coordinating competence) has been used in this regard.