Bogdan Stoica, a lawyer who was part of the team with which Simona Halep defended herself in the doping case, spoke about the major importance of the hair test in the case of the Romanian athlete. Practically, at that moment the whole team around Simona was convinced that it was not about voluntary doping.
In addition, Stoica revealed that in the case of the former WTA leader, the sabotage option was also taken into account, which assumed that an employee from the Mouratoglou academy wanted Simona harm.
Simona Halep, saved by the hair test in the doping case! That’s how she won everyone over to her side
It’s been more than a year and a half since Simona Halep was spotted positive for a substance prohibited by regulation of the World Anti-Doping Agency. It happened in August 2022, after the match played by our athlete in the inaugural round of the US Open. A few weeks later, in October 2022, Simona announced through a public statement that she was provisionally suspended from tennis for doping.
From that moment on, Halep declared herself shocked by the news she received and strongly maintained that she did not voluntarily dope. Then followed a long struggle of more than a year, which finally, in the debut of 2024, ended in victory. Halep won the appeal from the CAS and the original punishment, i.e. 4 years of suspension, was reduced to only 9 months. Thus, he was able to return to the field with immediate effect.
Bogdan Stoica, one of the athlete’s lawyers, stated in a recent podcast that an extremely important point of this fight that Simona Halep gave was the moment when samples were collected for the hair test. After the results came, the entire team from the Romanian entourage was convinced that it was not about voluntary doping. Thus, they all made every effort to investigate and find out what the source of the contamination was:
We read and tried to fit Simona’s case into the casuistry that other sports and tennis had faced before. At the beginning I had absolutely all scenarios on the table. When I say all scenarios I mean not only contamination but also sabotage. Because we even thought about this, about sabotage. After doing the first hair tests in Paris, it became 100% certain that it was contamination”, said Bogdan Stoica.
The sabotage variant ultimately failed
However, the version of sabotage was not confirmed. Simona Halep’s team later found out what the source of the contamination was. It is about the famous Keto MCT supplement, produced by the Canadian company Quantum Nutrition.
Bogdan Stoica said that this was another key point of the whole doping case, because in the absence of the contamination source, Simona Halep would not have had a chance to reduce the penalty of 4 years of suspension at the CAS:
It took a long time to discover the source. It was the most important thing in the whole economy of our file. In the absence of discovery of the source, you can only talk about a four-year penalty. The regulation provides by default (no – ex officio) four years. The file will create a precedent, which no other court will be able to disregard,” added lawyer Bogdan Stoica, in the podcast “I want to know”.
Currently, Simona Halep is training hard to get back to her pre-suspension form. At the moment, the athlete from Constanța has played only one official match, the one recorded on March 19, lost against the Iberian Paula Badosa at the Miami Open, score 6-1, 4-6, 3-6.
Tags: hair test Simona Halep doping case brought percent certainty
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