Simona Halep of Romania is banned for four years due to doping violations

Simona Halep, a two-time Grand Slam champion, has been barred from competitive tennis for four years due to drug breaches, the International Tennis Integrity Agency said on Tuesday.

By failing a drug test at the 2022 U.S. Open and for mistakes in her Athlete Biological Passport, the 31-year-old Romanian “committed intentional anti-doping rule violations,” according to the ITIA.

Halep has been under a temporary suspension since October 2022 and expects to appeal the decision. Till October 6, 2026, the four-year prohibition will be in effect.

In the WTA rankings, Halep rose to the top spot in 2017. A year after winning the French Open, she won Wimbledon in 2019, defeating 23-time major winner Serena Williams in the final.

Halep intends to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport after blaming tainted dietary supplements.

In a statement, Halep stated, “I am continuing to train and doing everything in my power to clear my name of these false allegations and return to the court.”

She said that she would “pursue all legal remedies against the questioned supplement company.”

Despite hearing testimony from Halep and her scientifically qualified witnesses, the ITIA panel found that the player had committed both offenses.

“The tribunal accepted Halep’s argument that they had taken a contaminated supplement, but determined the volume the player ingested could not have resulted in the concentration of Roxadustat found in the positive sample,” according to the ITIA.

The European Union’s drugs regulator claims that roxadustat encourages the body to create more of the naturally occurring hormone erythropoietin, or EPO, which has long been a preferred doping agent among cyclists and distance runners.

Experts have looked through Halep’s biological passport profile. Such passports are thought to be a tool to track doping since they provide a baseline assessment of the chemicals in an athlete’s body.

The panel said that Halep’s profile discrepancies might be explained by “likely doping.”

Since five-time Grand Slam winner Maria Sharapova tested positive for a recently banned drug at the 2016 Australian Open, Simona Halep is the most well-known tennis player to be suspended. Sharapova challenged the CAS decision to lessen her two-year punishment, which resulted in a finding that she was “less than significantly at fault” in the incident and could not “be considered to be an intentional doper.”

The Tennis Anti-Doping Program standards must be understood and adhered to at all times, the WTA said in a statement on Tuesday. The WTA will uphold the judgments made throughout the process and will keep a close eye on it.

When her ban is up, Halep, who will be 35, said that she has changed her dietary supplements in preparation for the 2022 hardcourt season.

She added in her statement, “I take the rules that govern our sport very seriously and take pride in the fact that I have never used any prohibited substance knowingly or intentionally.” “I refused to accept their four-year ban decision.”

After suffering from a string of injuries earlier in 2022, Halep pondered quitting the sport, but she later said that working with Williams’ former coach Patrick Mouratoglou had given her new life.

The ITIA, according to Mouratoglou, has treated Simona “totally unfairly and it is totally unacceptable.” The system is “destroying innocent players’ careers,” he said.

When Williams was defeated by Halep 6-2, 6-2 at the All England Club in 2019, she was attempting to win her seventh Wimbledon championship. Hours after the announcement of Halep’s suspension, the American said inexplicably on X, previously known as Twitter: “8 is a better number.”