Tennis player Jannik Sinner. (FILE photo)
Tennis player Jannik Sinner earlier in the year tested positive for doping but the player at the time claimed that it was a contamination and avoided the ban. However, on Saturday World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and sought a ban on the player.
The tribunal’s finding of “no fault or negligence” was not correct under the applicable rules, WADA said in a statement. WADA said it would seek “a period of ineligibility of between one and two years” for Italy’s Sinner, who won the Australian Open and the U.S. Open this year.
Earlier an in-competition test at the Masters 1000 tournament in Indian Wells conducted by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) on March 10, 2024 found an ‘adverse analytical finding’ (AAF) for Clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid. A second test, that took place out of competition on March 18 also detected the substance.
The first test recorded at 76pg (picograms) per millilitre of the sample collected while the second was recorded at 86pg per millilitre. Since one picogram is equal to one trillionth of a gram, roughly less than a billionth of a gram of the substance was found in his bloodstream.
In tennis, testing positive for non-specified substances on the WADA list, like Clostebol, carries a mandatory provisional suspension. The benchmark sanction, per the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s (ITIA) decision, is a four-year suspension.
Nevertheless as Per ITIA rules, athletes are allowed to immediately appeal the provisional suspensions after being notified of the violation, and the suspension can be removed if the player is able to prove that the violation took place due to a contaminated product
The Italian was suspended from April 4 to April 5, days after winning the Miami Masters, and also between April 17 and April 20, shortly after he was knocked out of the semifinal of the Monte Carlo Masters and a week before he played his next tournament in Madrid. Both times, his suspensions were revoked after his appeals were successful.
His argument was that his fitness trainer, Umberto Ferrara purchased Trofodermin, an over-the-counter spray that contains Clostebol used to heal cuts after his physiotherapist, Giacomo Naldi, cut his finger on a scalpel on March 3.
