Simona Halep free to play again after tennis doping ban significantly reduced

Simona Halep’s four-year ­doping ban has been reduced to nine months after the court of arbitration for sport (Cas) ruled that Halep was not guilty of intentional doping. She will be allowed to immediately resume her career and return to professional tennis.

Halep, a former world No 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion, had received the suspension last September after testing positive for roxadustat. The ruling marked one of the most significant doping bans in the history of tennis and the sport’s first anti-doping rule violation via the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) programme. At 32, a four-year ban would have likely meant the end of Halep’s career.

The independent tribunal had dealt Halep two separate ­anti-doping rule violations for both the presence of the blood-boosting drug roxadustat in a test administered on August 29th, 2022, following her loss in the first round of the US Open, and irregularities with her athlete biological passport. Halep immediately appealed the charges to Cas.

After hearing Halep’s case between February 7th and 9th in Lausanne, the Cas panel unanimously opted to reduce her period of ineligibility to nine months.

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As in her original case, Halep argued that the anti-doping rule violation was not intentional and the roxadustat had entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement, Keto MCT.

While the original decision had determined that the Keto MCT sample did not fully account for the concentration of roxadustat in her blood, the Cas panel concluded that while Halep did not exercise sufficient care with the Keto MCT supplement, her anti-doping rule violations were not intentional and she bore no significant fault or negligence.

During proceedings related to the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) charge, unlike the initial tribunal, the Cas panel accepted the results of a blood sample Halep had given on September 9th, 2022, for an unrelated surgery on that date.

They also noted Halep publicly announcing that she did not intend to compete for the remainder of 2022 after that surgery, which the Cas panel argued “impacted the plausibility of the doping scenarios relied on by the ITF Independent Tribunal”.

The Cas panel dismissed the ABP charge, concluding that they were not comfortably satisfied that an anti-doping rule violation had occurred regarding the irregularities in Halep’s blood parameters.

“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. I cannot wait to return to the tour,” Halep said in a statement.

Karen Moorhouse, chief executive officer of the International Tennis Integrity Agency, 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.” – Guardian