Former Wimbledon champion Simona Halep has criticized the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) for its handling of Iga Swiatek’s anti-doping violation.
On Thursday it was confirmed that the five-time Grand Slam champion had tested positive for a heart medication, trimetazidine (TMZ), during an out-of-competition test in August. Swiatek was provisionally suspended from the Tour for 22 days which forced her to miss a series of tournaments in Asia. However, she managed to overturn her suspension after proving the source of her failed test was a contaminated medication called melatonin which is manufactured in Poland and is used to treat jet lag.
The ITIA accepted that she has ‘No Significant Fault or Negligence’ but issued a one-month suspension, which means she had eight days of the suspension left to serve from the date of their decision. Furthermore, as Swiatek’s source of contamination was a medication and not a supplement, her penalty is less severe. The reason why is that the ITIA perceives the medication to have a lower degree of risk of contamination as it is processed under EU regulation.
The speed of Swiatek’s case has triggered criticism from Halep who was sidelined for months after she tested positive for roxadustat. She was provisionally suspended in October 2022 and later banned for four years in 2023 after the ITIA concluded she made two intentional breaches of anti-doping rules.
Halep appealed against that sentence to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and managed to reduce the ban to nine months. It was concluded that ‘on the balance of probabilities’ she had not taken the substance Roxadustat purposely and while she “did bear some level of fault or negligence for her violations” it was not intentional.
“I can’t find and I don’t think there can be a logical answer. It can only be bad will on the part of the ITIA, the organization that has done absolutely everything to destroy me despite the evidence,” Halep wrote on Instagram less than 24 hours after news of Swiatek’s anti-doping violation was made public.
“They very much wanted to destroy the last years of my career, they wanted something that I could never have imagined could be wanted. I always believed in good, I believed in the fairness of this sport, I believed in goodness.
“It was painful, it is painful and perhaps will always be painful the injustice that was done to me. How is it possible that in identical cases happening around the same time the ITIA have completely different approaches to my detriment? How could I accept that the WTA and the players’ council did not want to give me back the ranking I deserved!!!!
“I lost two years of my career, I lost many sleepless nights, thoughts, anxiety, unanswered questions… but I won justice. It turned out it was a contamination and the biological passport was a pure invention.”
Meanwhile, Great Britain’s Tara Moore is another player who says she received different treatment than others in her case with the ITIA. She was banned from the sport for 19 months after producing a positive test caused by a contaminated product.
“I took 19 months off as I had to make a “change to my team” too guys. Let’s not forget, mine was also contamination, and 2 other people also tested positive yet ITIA are appealing my case. Why is no one seriously looking into the corruption of the organisations that govern us?” Moore wrote on social media platform X.
The reason why Swiatek’s initial provisional suspension from the sport was not made public was because of rules set out by the governing bodies. An official statement on doping cases is not made public until the case is heard in full by a tribunal. This is why some nickname such incidents as ‘silent bans.’
Swiatek’s failed test comes during the same year as Jannik Sinner’s ongoing battle with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The Italian tested positive for clostebol in March but managed to prove that he came into contact with the substance via his former physio who was using a spray on his hands. The ITIA accepted there was “no fault or negligence” attached to 23-year-old Sinner. However, WADA has failed a case to CAS and is arguing that the verdict is “not correct under the applicable rules”.
As for the ITIA, they continue to face accusations that some players received preferential treatment. Both Sinner and Swiatek are top players with a significant income and can therefore afford the best legal expert to deal with such cases. Something lower-ranked players can’t do.
“These aren’t cases of intentional doping. We’re dealing with inadvertent breaches of the rules,” ITIA chief executive Karen Moorhouse commented on the cases of Swiatek and Sinner.
“So I don’t think this is a cause for concern for tennis fans. The fact that we’re being clearly open, transparent, and it shows the breadth and depth of our anti-doping programme.”
The ITIA is an independent body that was established in 2021 by the ATP, ITF, WTA and Grand Slams. Its purpose is to ‘safeguard the integrity of their professional tennis events worldwide.’
