Tennis: finally suspended nine months for doping, Simona Halep can already play again

Simona Halep lors de la procédure d'appel. MAXPPP – LAURENT GILLIERON

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Tuesday reduced 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 last July .

After three days of hearing at the beginning of February, the sports court considered that the positive test of the former world No. 1 came from a ' ;quot;contaminated supplement", and that the anomalies in his biological passport could be linked to a "surgical operation", according to a press release .

Also read: Tennis: former world number 1 Simona Halep, provisionally suspended for doping

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 & quot;a period of suspension ranging from four to six years" against the double Grand Slam winner.

Suspension served before call…

The Lausanne jurisdiction promises to clarify "as soon as possible" the practical consequences of her decision, namely a suspension from October 7, 2022 to July 6, 2023 – already served even before Simona Halep appealed – and the cancellation of all her results between August 29, 2022 and October 7 2022.

Halep's career has been on hold since October 7, 2022, the date of the start of his 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 as an EPO in the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

The former world number one was then caught up in the spring of 2023 by a second affair, this time "irregularities" in the data from his biological passport, a long-term monitoring tool for high-level athletes.

A 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 result from the amount ingested by the player" – a reasoning invalidated on Tuesday by the CAS.

Regarding Halep's biological passport, the CAS integrated into its reasoning "the results of a private blood sample provided by Ms. Halep on the 9th September 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".