Simona Halep, the former Wimbledon and French Open champion tennis player, has expressed dismay at the way Iga Swiatek's doping case was handled compared to her own.
Halep, a 33-year-old Romanian who initially received a four-year ban for doping, said there had been severe differences in how their cases were treated by tennis authorities.
“I sit and try to understand but it is really impossible for me to understand something like this," Halep posted Friday on her Instagram account. “I sit and wonder, ‘Why such a big difference in treatment and judgment?’
"I can’t find, and I don’t think there can be, a logical answer. It can only be bad will on the part of ITIA, the organisation that did absolutely everything to destroy me despite the evidence."
The International Tennis Integrity Agency announced on Thursday that the five-time major champion Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, a heart medication known as TMZ.
The 23-year-old Polish player failed an out-of-competition drug test in August, and the ITIA accepted her explanation that the result was unintentional and was caused by the contamination of a nonprescription medication, melatonin, that Swiatek was taking for issues with jet lag and sleeping.
Halep, who won the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019, received a four-year suspension after testing positive for the banned drug Roxadustat at the 2022 U.S. Open.
Her suspension was reduced by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to nine months after CAS accepted her explanation of a contaminated supplement. But she missed 1 1/2 years of playing.
“I have always believed in good, I have believed in the fairness of this sport, I have believed in kindness," Halep wrote on Instagram. “The injustice that was done to me was painful, is painful and maybe will always be painful. How is it possible that in identical cases that happened at about the same time (of the season), ITIA has completely different approaches, to my detriment?”
Swiatek's case prompted men's tennis player Nick Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up, to post “OUR SPORT IS COOKED” on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Canadian tennis player Denis Shapovalov, ranked No. 56, posted a sarcastic-sounding “ 1 month ban eh ” on his page.
Swiatek's case follows a similar one involving Jannik Sinner, the top-ranked men's player.
Sinner tested positive twice for an anabolic steroid in March but was not banned in an ITIA decision because the agency determined he was not to blame.
It led to claims by some observers of a two-tier system, with critics arguing it afforded Sinner protection because of his status as a leading player.
Earlier this month, ATP Tour chairman Andrea Gaudenzi acknowledged there “ could have been better communication ” in explaining the rules involved in Sinner’s doping case, but refuted allegations of double standards.
The decision to clear Sinner of wrongdoing, however, was appealed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in September.
WADA is seeking a ban of one to two years and the Switzerland-based CAS is expected to make a final ruling on the case in 2025.
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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
