MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Iga Swiatek's one-month suspension for failing a drug test will not be appealed by the World Anti-Doping Agency because her explanation “is plausible,” WADA announced on Monday.
WADA released its decision just minutes after Swiatek, a five-time Grand Slam champion and former No. 1-ranked women's tennis player, sealed a 6-0, 6-1 victory against Eva Lys to reach the Australian Open quarterfinals.
“Well, for sure, I’m just satisfied that I can get closure, kind of,” Swiatek said, “and I can just move on and finish this whole process, because I just want to play tennis and focus on the tournament.”
Unlike the Swiatek case, WADA did appeal the exoneration of current men's No. 1 Jannik Sinner and a hearing is scheduled to be heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April.
Sinner was not suspended because the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) determined he was not negligent for two positive tests for an anabolic steroid in March.
The resolution of Swiatek’s case was made public by the ITIA in late November. She already had been sidelined provisionally, missing three tournaments in October, and finished her ban during the sport's offseason.
“WADA sought advice from external legal counsel, who considered that the athlete’s contamination explanation was well evidenced, that the ITIA decision was compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code, and that there was no reasonable basis to appeal it to the CAS,” Monday’s statement from WADA said.
Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, a heart medication known as TMZ.
Swiatek failed an out-of-competition drug test in August, and the ITIA accepted her explanation that the result was unintentional, and caused by the contamination of the non-prescription medication melatonin that she was taking for issues with jet lag and sleeping.
The ITIA said it determined her level of fault was “at the lowest end of the range for no significant fault or negligence.”
That “scenario,” WADA said Monday, “is plausible and that there would be no scientific grounds to challenge it.”
On the eve of the Australian Open, Swiatek described the initial period she was sidelined, which she chalked up at the time to personal reasons, as “pretty chaotic” and said, “For sure, it wasn’t easy; it was probably, like, the worst time in my life.”
“It got pretty awkward. Like, we chose for the first tournament to say ‘personal reasons’ because we honestly thought the suspension is going to be lifted soon," Swiatek said in Melbourne. “From the beginning it was obvious that something was contaminated because the level of this substance in my urine was so low that it had to be contamination.”
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