System needs to ‘reinvent itself Tennis has an anti-doping procedural problem, critics say

For months, the tennis world has simmered with controversy in the wake of two doping cases involving top-ranking players: first, men’s player Jannik Sinner and months later, women’s player Iga Świątek.

And when the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced on February 15 that Sinner had accepted a three-month ban to settle his case and avoid it going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), it thrust the issue back into the spotlight once again, particularly as the ban length means the Italian player won’t miss any grand slam tournaments.

“The anti-doping process is just all over the map, and it’s completely rogue,” Vasek Pospisil – a 2014 Wimbledon men’s doubles champion – told CNN Sport. “There’s absolutely no trust, that’s for sure.”

Pospisil and Novak Djokovic cofounded the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), which acts as a players’ union.

Pospisil and several others say that the saga has exposed the different experiences of the anti-doping system felt by players – where the likes of Sinner and Świątek, who was banned for a month, have escaped with short sanctions and some lesser-known players have been hit with more severe punishments.

“The majority of the players don’t feel that it’s fair,” Djokovic told reporters at the Qatar Open. “The majority of the players feel like there is favoritism happening.”

But, for Marjolaine Viret – an associate professor at the University of Lausanne specializing in health and sport – these accusations of inequality are more “rooted in the legal complexity of the system, and the fact that broader audiences” don’t normally pick up on the differences between the cases.

Doping cases are inherently complicated, full of scientific and legal terms, and often take years to fully resolve as they wind their way through various courts and tribunals. Still, the outcomes in the Sinner and Świątek cases “did not seem particularly special,” she told CNN Sport.

Similarly, the fact that these cases were made public “is probably a healthy sign,” especially because they involve top players, said John WilIiam Devine, a senior lecturer in ethics and sport at the University of Swansea.

“You could look at these cases and say the system held in the sense that the tennis authorities … didn’t brush them under the carpet,” he told CNN.

Although the system seems to have held, there is a lingering perception among players that it has failed, revealing their lack of trust in the institutions, highlighting the financial inequalities among individual tennis players and spotlighting the issues with the way the current anti-doping system deals with contamination cases.

Players have directed much of their ire towards the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) which originally dealt with Sinner’s and Świątek’s cases. The ITIA maintains it approaches every doping case “in the same way, irrespective of a player’s ranking or status,” it told CNN in a statement.

Contamination as an excuse and a risk

Anti-doping works under the principle of strict liability, meaning that an athlete is automatically held responsible if a banned substance is found in their body and they have to prove how it got there.

“For an anti-doping rule violation to take place, the athlete doesn’t need to have intentionally doped,” Silvia Camporesi, a professor in ethics and sport at the KU Leuven university in Belgium, explained to CNN Sport.

A banned substance, even if it is unknowingly consumed in contaminated food or medicine, would leave an athlete liable and potentially facing sanctions. Both Sinner and Świątek say the banned substances entered their system in this way via contaminated products.

“Contamination is the most used excuse by cheaters, but this is also the risk faced by the (clean) athlete,” David Pavot, professor of sports law at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, told CNN Sport.

Sinner twice tested positive for the banned substance clostebol in March last year and initially avoided suspension since an independent tribunal convened by the ITIA accepted his explanation that the anabolic steroid had entered his system via his physiotherapist, who had been applying an over-the-counter spray to his own skin – not Sinner’s – to treat a small cut.

Świątek’s case has some key differences to Sinner’s. She tested positive in August for trimetazidine, a type of heart medication normally used to prevent angina attacks. Unlike Sinner, she initially couldn’t explain how the drug had entered her system, and she missed three tournaments during her provisional month-long suspension.

Eventually, she explained the positive test by saying that a batch of melatonin she took to combat jet lag was contaminated by the banned substance – an explanation the ITIA accepted after testing the medication.

There are good reasons why the doping system is built on this principle of strict liability, even if it catches out some innocent athletes, added sports ethicist Devine.

As well as acting as a deterrent, it makes it easier for anti-doping authorities to sanction athletes who have doped.

“One of the most difficult things to prove in any kind of criminal or civil case is intent … by operating with that strict liability doctrine … it makes it easier for cash strapped sporting bodies to prosecute these cases,” Devine said.

Intent is considered later in the process, informing the length of the ban handed down to athletes, he added.

To defend themselves and prove they didn’t intend to consume these substances, both Sinner and Świątek would have marshalled their considerable financial resources. Sinner hired one of the best sports law firms in the world. Świątek’s team tracked down the batch of melatonin she had consumed.

In the end, Świątek received a one-month ban and Sinner a three-month ban. Neither of them missed any grand slam tournaments during this time.

By contrast, Pospisil said that in his role at the PTPA, he has seen many players “just take the ban because they can’t afford to pay for a lawyer, even if they are innocent.”

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