Tennis’ biggest drugs problem may not be the drugs themselves. Instead, it revolves around trust.
Mere months after revelations that men’s world No.1 Jannik Sinner twice tested positive for clostebol, the sport is reeling again after five-time grand slam champion Iga Swiatek took to Instagram to reveal she, too, had failed a drugs test.
Iga Swiatek is the latest big-name tennis player to fail a drugs test.Credit: AELTC/Getty Images
Like Sinner, Swiatek received a provisional suspension before appealing inside 10 days, meaning the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) did not immediately divulge her result.
The World Anti-Doping Agency does not mandate announcing provisional suspensions, leaving it up to sporting bodies to decide whether to do so. Tennis actually does, except when there is an appeal in those circumstances.
Swiatek, who tested positive to banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ), has now accepted a token one-month ban, with only eight days to run because of time served. She is free to contest the Australian Open in January.
The ITIA accepted the Polish superstar’s defence that the extremely low traces of TMZ in her system owed to contamination of her........