GENEVA – Former Wimbledon and French Open champion Simona Halep “cannot wait to return” after she had her four-year doping ban cut to nine months by the top court for global sport on March 5, making the former world No. 1 eligible to return to competition immediately.
Halep, 32, was initially banned for four years for two separate anti-doping rule violations. However, the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that her suspension should be reduced to nine months, a period she has already served.
“The CAS panel has unanimously determined that the four-year period of ineligibility... is to be reduced to a period of ineligibility of nine months starting on Oct 7, 2022, which period expired on July 6, 2023,” CAS said.
Now that the Romanian is eligible to compete, she could be granted a wild card to this season’s French Open in May or Wimbledon in July.
“Throughout this long and difficult process, I have maintained my belief that the truth would eventually come out, and that a just decision would be reached, because I am and always have been a clean athlete,” Halep said in a statement.
“My faith in the process was tested by the scandalous accusations that were levelled against me, and by the seemingly unlimited resources that were aligned against me. But, in the end, the truth prevailed, even if it took much longer than I wish it had. I cannot wait to return to the tour.”
Halep was suspended in October 2022 after she tested positive for roxadustat – an anti-anaemia drug that stimulates the production of red blood cells – at the US Open that year.
She was also charged with another doping offence in May 2023 due to irregularities in her athlete biological passport (ABP), a method designed to monitor different blood parameters over time to reveal potential doping.
Halep, who vigorously denied the charges against her, has said that she would most likely be compelled to retire if the initial four-year ban was maintained.
She had blamed contaminated supplements for her positive test at the US Open and accused the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) of charging her with an ABP violation after the group of experts who assessed her profile learnt her identity.
In response to the latest ruling, ITIA chief executive Karen Moorhouse said: “An essential element of the anti-doping process is a player’s ability to appeal, and the ITIA respects both their right to do so, and the outcome.
“We await the full reasoned decision and will review it thoroughly in due course.”
An independent tribunal accepted Halep’s argument that she had taken contaminated supplements, but said the volume she ingested could not have resulted in the concentration of roxadustat found in her positive sample.
However, the CAS panel said that while Halep should have been more careful when using the supplement, she did not bear significant fault for the violation.
“Having carefully considered all the evidence put before it, the CAS panel determined that Halep had established, on the balance of probabilities, that the roxadustat entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement... and that the roxadustat, as detected in her sample, came from that contaminated product,” CAS said.
“As a result, the CAS panel determined that Halep had also established, on the balance of probabilities, that her anti-doping rule violations were not intentional.”
Also, the ABP charge was dismissed on the basis that it was appropriate to consider that the sample given in late 2022 was shortly before a surgery and that Halep had said she was not going to compete for the rest of that year.
The Professional Tennis Players Association, meanwhile, said that the CAS decision “underscores the need for sensible reform to an unjust system that fails to protect (the players’ rights)”. REUTERS, AFP
