Simona Halep’s ‘triumph of truth’ after doping ban significantly reduced
Simona Halep’s four-year doping ban has been reduced to nine months after the court of arbitration for sport (Cas) ruled that she was not guilty of intentional doping. She will be allowed to resume her career and return immediately to professional tennis.
Halep, a former world No 1 and two-time grand slam title winner, had received the suspension last Septem ber after testing positive for roxadustat. The ruling marked one of the most significant doping bans in the history of tennis and the sport’s first anti-doping rule violation via the athlete biological passport (ABP) programme. At 32, a four-year ban would likely have meant the end of Halep’s career.
The independent tribunal had dealt Halep two separate anti-doping rule violations for both the presence of the blood-boosting drug roxadustat in a test administered on 29 August 2022 following her defeat in the US Open first round and irregularities with her athlete biological passport. Halep appealed immediately against the charges to Cas.
After hearing Halep’s case on 7-9 February in Lausanne, the Cas panel opted unanimously to reduce to nine months her period of ineligibility. As in her original case, Halep argued that the anti-doping rule violation was not intentional and the roxadustat had entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement, Keto MCT.
While the original decision had determined that the Keto MCT sample did not fully account for the concentration of roxadustat in her blood, the Cas panel concluded that while Halep did not exercise sufficient care with the Keto MCT supplement, her anti-doping rule violations were not intentional and she bore no significant fault or negligence. “This ordeal has been a testament to resilience,” Halep wrote on Instagram. “The triumph of truth is a bittersweet vindication that, albeit delayed, is immensely gratifying.”
During proceedings related to the ABP charge, unlike the initial tribunal, the Cas panel accepted the results of a blood sample Halep had given on 9 September 2022 for an unrelated surgery on that date. They also noted Halep announcing publicly that she did not intend to compete for the remainder of 2022 after that surgery, which the Cas panel argued “impacted the plausibility of the doping scenarios relied on by the ITF independent tribunal”.
The Cas panel dismissed the ABP charge, concluding that they were not comfortably satisfied that an antidoping rule violation had occurred regarding the irregularities in Halep’s blood parameters. In a statement Halep said: “My faith in the process was tested by the scandalous accusations that were levelled against me, and by the seemingly unlimited resources that were aligned against me. I cannot wait to return to the tour.”
Karen Moorhouse, chief executive officer of the International Tennis Integrity Agency, said: “An essential element of the anti-doping process is a player’s ability to appeal, and the ITIA respects both their right to do so, and the outcome. We await the full reasoned decision and will review it thoroughly in due course.”