“Does tennis actually uncover dopers or demolish innocents?”

Another player, this time in doubles, Tara Moore from Great Britain, lost two years of her career due to doping. He returned to the field after proving that he had eaten meat contaminated with a banned substance.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), the independent body whose mission is to promote “tennis we can trust”, says that “no one wants to put tennis players on the wall or ruin entire careers for no good reason.”

Some players never recover from long suspensions

But there are many cases of players who, following long, convoluted and unfair processes and procedures, they failed and their careers never got back on track before the allegations.

“For them it is a simple procedure. The ITIA has only one mission – to sentence us to the harshest possible punishment, according to the charges,” said Kamil Majchrzak, the 75th ATP tennis player who received a one-year and one-month suspension after testing positive for an anti-doping test in 2022.

“But our lives hang here by a thread, not theirs.”

Simona Halep: “A real torture”

Speaking about the case of Simona Halep, the BBC points out that the Romanian has always maintained her innocence and criticized the ITIA proceedings as many times as she had the opportunity, during their development, describing them as “true torture”.

Her former coach, Australian Darren Cahill, accused them on ITIA representatives for concocting “false allegations and false premises”, calling for a fundamental change in these procedures.

Karen Moorhouse, executive chairman of the ITIA, admits the whole case of former world No. 1 Halep “raises some fair and important issues”. But the agency rejects Cahill’s request and says it does everything by the book every time.

Simona Halep, taking a break from training at WTA Miami, photo: Imago

Lawsuits mean money spent and psychological trauma

The ITIA applies the same set of rules set by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and can be put under investigation if there are suspicions that they would ever fail to apply them correctly.

Like Halep, Majchrzak tested positive for doping in 2022 and has always maintained his innocence, adding that the whole story was particularly traumatic for him.

The Pole was a regular at four Grand Slams, had represented his country at the Tokyo Olympics and had reached the highest point of his career when he learned that one of his biological samples contained traces of an anabolic steroid.

Majchrzak defended himself, saying one of his nutritional drinks had been contaminated. ITIA tested unopened packets of the same supplement and found the banned substance in them as well.

Because he had already served seven of his 13-month suspension, the Polish tennis player decided not to appeal the decision. He returned to the field in January 2024.

“I put in a lot of effort, I worked with my psychologist, with my coaches, with my wife and with my whole family to get through the most devastating period of my life, when I thought, in fact, that I had no life left,” said Kamil Majchrzak.

Players say the long, uncertain breaks are devastating

“I had no purpose anymore. My whole existence was about tennis. Suddenly, I didn’t know if I was going to play anymore or not. It was something absolutely crushing.”

At this moment, the Pole has won 30 of the first 35 matches after his comeback and is approaching the 350th position of the ATP hierarchy.

Tara Moore (31 years old) was also suspended in 2022, after two anabolic steroids on the WADA banned list – boldenone and nandrolone – were found in her body. In December of the following year, an independent commission found that the source of both substances was a piece of meat eaten during a tour in Colombia.

After the final decision, Moore spoke of the “19 months of deep emotional distress” during which he saw his “reputation, ranking position and joie de vivre all slip through his fingers”.

And Tara Moore’s case is still not over. ITIA still wants to prove that it was not possible that both substances found in the athlete’s body were the result of a portion of contaminated food.

Moore returned to action this week at a lower-level tournament in Sardinia after resorting to crowdfunding to fund his sporting comeback.

Majchrzak estimates that he spent somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 euros on his defense in his trial, which took a serious toll on his bank account.

The difficulty of taking it from 0 in the circuit is the biggest obstacle

When they return to the circuit, tennis players are no longer ranked and rely only on invitations to various tournaments. Majchrzak says he feels “blessed” to have been invited to play in small tournaments in Tunisia and Egypt.

The few points won there were another springboard for him, encouraging him to go to Rwanda for two more ATP Challenger Tour events. He won one of them.

In May he went to other challenger tournaments, in China and Taiwan, where he will play in the qualifiers.

“I still have financial difficulties – I have to live, eat, function,” says Majchrzak. “Playing these small tournaments, I have to travel and so I lose money. For a year and four months I have been losing money continuously”.

The BBC wonders if there is any hint of flexibility in the ITIA rules

In 2023, ITIA performed 7,247 doping tests, within and outside competitions. Of these, only 13 were positive and led to provisional suspensions.

Halep and Majchrzak were two of three top 100 players to be banned, in addition to American Jenson Brooksby who was suspended for missing three tests in a single year.

“I believe the vast majority of tennis players are clean and comply with the rules set out by the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme,” ITIA officials said.

“It is equally fair to say that some athletes choose to cheat and others break the rules through carelessness or ignorance.”

Halep, who was charged with two separate anti-doping rule violations, was initially handed a four-year ban by an independent panel. The punishment was reduced to a period of nine months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS), which considered that it is very likely that the Romanian did not take the banned substance roxadustat “on purpose”.

In Majchrzak’s case, ITIA confirmed that he did not take the banned substances intentionally. But he was found liable because he should have known the supplements posed a “significant risk”.

Negligence in doping – charged as intent

While it does not want to be seen as the “police” of tennis players, the ITIA acknowledges that there is no “flexibility in the face of negligence” in world anti-doping rules.

“Any violation of anti-doping rules – intentional or not – can have multiple consequences,” ITIA officials point out.

Marcel du Coudray, Majchrzak’s coach, recently said that the ITIA shows too little empathy towards the athletes and resorts to intimidation tactics, forcing them to accept punishments.

These allegations are strongly denied by ITIA.

Majchrzak did not use the same harsh words as Du Coudray, but admits that some of the players have no choice but to accept the punishment, because they have neither financial nor mental resources.

“My lawyers said that I have a standing case and I have a chance of winning if I go to CAS. But they warned me that there the process can take much longer,” said the Pole.

So he accepted the suspension, even though it didn’t seem fair to him.

Simona Halep failed an anti-doping test at the US Open 2022 and was suspended, Photo: Imago

Why do these processes take so long?

“Halep is 32 years old, she missed a year and five months of what could have been the sunset of her career. His original sentence was reduced, resulting in a shorter sentence than the time he had already spent behind bars,” writes the BBC about the Romanian player.

Moore returned to the field on April 30, 2024, after nearly two years of provisional suspension. Sometimes investigations into positive tests are extremely complex, especially when players deny knowingly taking banned substances.

Those indicted must provide evidence to support it, leading to further investigations and testing by the ITIA.

In Halep’s case, the independent tribunal had to read 8,000 pages from ITIA and the player’s lawyers.

“The hearing and subsequent decision marks the end of a time-consuming, resource-intensive process, which we know is very stressful for players,” ITIA admitted.

“We prefer to prevent such problems in the first place, so we emphasize education.”

Majchrzak says he understands the complexity of these cases, but says their resolution should come faster.

“We have supported one version from the very beginning, with evidence and details explained. I sent everything that was asked of me at high speed and it was still seven months before I received the one year and one month suspension. Tennis players’ careers don’t last that long and we waste time on some formalities,” concluded the Polish tennis player.

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