Nick Kyrgios has taken a fresh swipe at tennis officialdom, declaring the sport is “cooked” after it was rocked by a second doping case this year involving one of the top players.
Iga Swiatek, the world No.2 and three-time Roland Garros defending champion, has accepted a one-month ban after testing positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a banned substance.
It followed the case of men’s world No.1 Jannik Sinner who tested positive twice for an anabolic steroid in March but was not banned in an International Tennis Integrity Agency decision. The ITIA accepted the Italian’s argument that the drug clostebol entered his system through a massage given by a support staffer.
Outspoken: Australia’s Nick Kyrgios.Credit: Getty Images
The ITIA announced on Thursday that five-time major champion Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for trimetazidine. The 23-year-old Polish player failed an out-of-competition drug test in August.
Swiatek’s case prompted Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up, to post “OUR SPORT IS COOKED” on social media platform X.
The 29-year-old was responding to a tweet from Zimbabwean tennis player and world No. 337 Benjamin Lock, who wrote: “1 month ban. It’s not even April fools day. Don’t play with us like that. Two number 1s in the world failing drug tests in the same year is wild.”
Simona Halep, the former Wimbledon and French Open champion tennis player, expressed dismay at the way Swiatek’s doping case was handled compared to her own.
Halep, a 33-year-old Romanian who initially received a four-year ban for doping, said there had been severe differences in how their cases were treated by tennis authorities.
“I sit and try to understand but it is really impossible for me to understand something like this,” Halep posted Friday on her Instagram account. “I sit and wonder, ‘Why such a big difference in treatment and judgment?’
“I can’t find, and I don’t think there can be, a logical answer. It can only be bad will on the part of ITIA, the organisation that did absolutely everything to destroy me despite the evidence.”
The ITIA accepted Swiatek’s explanation that the result was unintentional and was caused by the contamination of a nonprescription medication, melatonin, that Swiatek was taking for issues with jet lag and sleeping.
Halep, who won the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019, received a four-year suspension after testing positive for the banned drug Roxadustat at the 2022 US Open.
Her suspension was reduced by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to nine months after CAS accepted her explanation of a contaminated supplement. But she missed 18 months of playing.
“I have always believed in good, I have believed in the fairness of this sport, I have believed in kindness,” Halep wrote on Instagram. “The injustice that was done to me was painful, is painful and maybe will always be painful. How is it possible that in identical cases that happened at about the same time (of the season), ITIA has completely different approaches, to my detriment?”
Canadian tennis player Denis Shapovalov, ranked No. 56, posted a sarcastic-sounding ”1 month ban eh” on his page.
The Swiatek and Sinner cases have led to claims by some observers of a two-tier system, with critics arguing it afforded Sinner protection because of his status as a leading player.
Earlier this month, ATP Tour chairman Andrea Gaudenzi acknowledged there “could have been better communication” in explaining the rules involved in Sinner’s doping case, but rejected allegations of double standards.
Sinner’s drugs ban reprieve has provoked a backlash from his fellow professionals, with Kyrgios branding it “ridiculous”.
“Ridiculous – whether it was accidental or planned. You get tested twice with a banned (steroid) substance… you should be gone for 2 years. Your performance was enhanced. Massage cream…. Yeah nice,” Kyrgios posted on X in August.
The decision to clear Sinner of wrongdoing, however, was appealed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in September.
WADA is seeking a ban of one to two years and the Switzerland-based CAS is expected to make a final ruling on the case in 2025.
AP and Scott Spits
