The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reduced, on Tuesday March 5, the suspension imposed on Romanian tennis champion Simona Halep for two violations of anti-doping regulations, reducing her from four years to nine months, which she has served since July last.
After three days of hearing at the beginning of February, the sports court considered that the positive test of the former world number 1 came from a “contaminated supplement”and that the anomalies in his biological passport could be linked to a ” surgery “, according to a press release.
The CAS therefore disavowed the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), which had sanctioned Simona Halep on September 22, 2023, and claimed in this arbitration procedure “a period of suspension ranging from four to six years” against the double Grand Slam winner.
Second case
The Lausanne jurisdiction promises to clarify ” as soon as possible “ the practical consequences of its decision, namely a suspension from October 7, 2022 to July 6, 2023 – already served even before Simona Halep appealed – and the cancellation of all its results between August 29, 2022 and October 7, 2022.
Simona Halep’s career has been on hold since October 7, 2022, the date of the start of her provisional suspension after a test carried out at the US Open 2022, positive for roxadustat, a molecule which stimulates the production of red blood cells and which is classified among EPOs in the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
The former world number 1 was then caught up in the spring of 2023 by a second affair, this time “irregularities” in the data from its biological passport, a long-term monitoring tool for high-level athletes.
“Contaminated food supplement”
Ruling at first instance, the ITIA had “admitted the argument of taking a contaminated food supplement put forward by Halep”but “determined that the concentration of roxadustat found in the positive sample could not have resulted from the amount ingested by the player” – a reasoning invalidated Tuesday by the CAS.
Concerning Halep’s biological passport, the CAS integrated into its reasoning “the results of a private blood sample provided by Mme Halep on September 9, 2022, in the context of a surgical operation » and while she had renounced all competition for the rest of the year, judging that these elements made it implausible “the doping scenarios put forward by the ITIA”.