Halep, punished for four years for doping, wins in court and can play again

Life, like tennis itself, like one of those long exchanges in reality, offers twists like the one that today substantially changes the sporting destiny of Simona Halep.

The 32-year-old Romanian warned in September, after eleven months earlier (October 2022) she tested positive for consumption of a prohibited stimulant, roxadustat, and the Tennis Integrity Unit (ITIA) imposed a punishment of four years;

That is to say, she practically put an end to a career that already had many questions due to injuries: “My fight continues.

I take the rules of our sport very seriously and, in fact, I am proud to have never intentionally used any prohibited substance.

“I refuse to accept the decision.”

Now, his efforts to prove his innocence, that is, that there was no real desire to improve performance through the anti-anemia drug and that the irregularities subsequently detected in his biological passport were also unfounded, finds reward in the ruling of the Court of Sports Arbitration (TAS), which reduces the sentence from those four years to nine months.

In this way, what seemed like Halep's sporting sentence now becomes light for the former number one, also winner of 24 WTA singles titles, including a Roland Garros (2018) and a Wimbledon (2019).

To begin with, Halep will be able to reappear immediately, given that the nine-month exclusion applies to the period between October 7, 2022 and July 6, 2023, as determined by the Lausanne court, so the punishment is already has been fulfilled.

After intense preliminary processes and a three-day hearing, from February 7 to 9 of this year, the CAS draws a double conclusion.

Firstly, that the violations of anti-doping regulations by the athlete – detected in a urine test carried out at the 2022 US Open – “were not intentional”, despite the fact that there was “a certain level of guilt and negligence”;

and secondly, that the prohibited trace found in a blood sample provided by Halep on those same dates must be understood “in the context of a surgery [for respiratory problems] that took place shortly after” she fell in the first round of the great American.

Specifically, just two weeks later.

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The latest doping: EPO in pills

Regarding the presence of roxadustat, which violates articles 2.1 and 2.2 of the anti-doping program, the CAS accepts the “contamination” argument, since Halep alleged at the time that the medication—trade name Evrenzo, something like EPO in pills, according to experts—entered his body “through the consumption of a contaminated supplement” that he had used shortly before August 29, 2022, when he lost in New York against the Ukrainian Daria Snigur, and that, “as detected in the sample, it came from that contaminated product.”

Regarding the infraction in the biological passport, article 2.2 of the regulations, it states that in addition to the proximity between the detection and the operation to which she was subjected, Halep then made some statements in which she assured that she had the intention of ending that season. , which “impact the plausibility of the doping scenarios on which the independent tribunal [ITIA] of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) was based.”

When the news of the positive came out, Halep stated that it was the “hardest match” of her life, “a fight for the truth,” and said in a statement that her “great love story” for tennis was being undermined. .

The episode coincided with her separation, after only a year of marriage.

Meanwhile, the coach who outlined her game in her best years, the Australian Darren Cahill, today on the bench of the Italian Jannik Sinner, indicated: “There is no possibility, knowingly or deliberately, that Simona has taken any prohibited substance.

None.

Zero.

“She is an athlete who gets stressed by anything that a doctor may prescribe or by any supplement that she uses.”

Her coach at the time, the Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou, described the case as “a parody of justice”, but in parallel, it was known that the Romanian had changed nutritional supplements at that time at the request of Mr. Frédéric Lefebvre, an employee at the Academy. of the Gaul on the Côte d'Azur.

In December of last year, the tennis player announced that she had dispensed with Mouratoglou's services.

“Right now my confidence level is broken, I stopped working with him and I focus on him since this happened, so we'll see what happens in the future.

I hope I can trust someone again like before,” she noted.

“It was his team that suggested taking that supplement, and you are supposed to trust your team.

and number one for 20 weeks,

forcefully .

“The truth will come to light,” the accused said after testifying at the trial, held 14 months after the announcement of the positive result for roxadustat.

“I think I will soon be back on the track,” added Halep, who, according to the Reuters agency in mid-February, has also sued the manufacturer of the nutritional supplement (Quantum Nutrition), from whom she claims 10 million dollars, about 9, 2 euros.

Today, without

and starting from the underground, he continues to exercise and celebrates the resolution communicated this Tuesday by the CAS:

“My faith in the process was tested by the outrageous accusations leveled against me and the seemingly limitless resources arrayed against me.

"I can't wait to get back on the circuit."

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