Ring-fencing of what doping in sport is doesn’t accurately capture the full gamut of what the term means. An athlete has been “done for doping” dredges up images of unknowing teenage female East German athletes circa 1976.
Utter the term doping to the casual observer of a certain age and the immediate recollection they’ll have is that of Ben Johnson’s defiant one-armed salute, performed crossing the line in Seoul in 1988.
The Canadian sprinter, more closely resembling a condom stuffed full of walnuts than an athlete, decimated a world-class field composed almost entirely of athletes who would later fall foul of doping regulations.
The International Olympic Committee retrieved Johnson’s gold medal two days later as he was unsophisticatedly juiced with the old-school anabolic steroid Stanozolol. And there wasn’t much effort to hide it.
In 2025, what constitutes doping is the full spectrum of sophistication and nuance. Sure, your archetypal Ben Johnson-esque wilful and devious cheating still occurs, but so is much else that lacks any mens rea element is also doping. Even then, there’s a sliding scale of blameworthiness. Many doping offences don’t at all involve the ingesting of a prohibited substance.
Jannik Sinner wins his second Australian Open crown in January – before accepting a three-month doping ban.Credit: AP
There’s ultra-high emotion that invariably attaches to examples of doping involving prominent athletes, regardless as to what’s factual. That emotive response is triggered to a significant degree by the legacy of what doping was, as distinct from actuality; that rigid conception of what things were, as distinct to a consideration of what the facts are.
That the World Anti-Doping Agency settled its appeal against Jannik Sinner’s 2024 exoneration by an independent tribunal of the International Tennis Integrity Agency evidently is a matter of some angst; as if such an outcome isn’t possible.
Such an ending is possible and altogether orthodox. The paranoia concerning WADA apparently manufacturing some kind of sweetheart deal, which sits beyond the applicable rules, is irrational and unfounded.
That confusion disabused, in September 2024 WADA announced, upon filing its appeal against the ITIA tribunal’s clearing of Sinner, that WADA was seeking a period of ineligibility of between one and two years for the Italian. Making that unqualified statement is one thing; winding back the expectations it sets is quite another.
Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson (left) wins the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. He was later disqualified.Credit: Getty Images
The first WADA Code came into force in 2003. New versions were produced in 2009, 2015 and in 2021. The latter is the current version; the next edition is due in 2027.
While maybe a blunt measure, the 2003 WADA Code is 44 pages long. The text of the 2021 WADA Code is more than four times as long; add the code’s international standards into the mix, and you have a document approaching 1000 pages.
The concept of the case resolution agreement was only introduced in the latest version of the code. In 2003, or even 2015, the idea that doping cases would routinely be subject to an agreed settlement wasn’t codified the way it is now.
For WADA and Sinner to have struck a deal at all, specific tests must first have been met. The player must admit the anti-doping rule violation, relating to having present in his system in early 2024 the prohibited substance Clostebol. The athlete must also agree to “consequences” acceptable to WADA, meaning WADA, and not the likes of Sport Integrity Australia, is the final decider on such matters.
If those two conditions are met, the door opens to WADA authorising the reduction of any period of ineligibility based on WADA’s assessment of the seriousness of the athlete’s violation, the athlete’s degree of fault and how promptly the athlete admitted the violation.
There’s nothing remarkable about the fact WADA and Sinner did a deal. But it’s a paradigm shift from the first WADA Code rolled out in 2003. Back then, almost every athlete’s case went to a tribunal hearing unless the athlete copped the relevant doping sanctions fixed for specific offences.
There’s a lesson here: in 2025, there’s always a deal to be done with WADA. Since 2021 at least, the rules of the game have changed.
Jannik Sinner has won three grand slam titles, including the US Open in 2024.Credit: Getty Images
The system has evolved; our understanding, maybe less so. But as to the specifics of Sinner’s settlement …
The terms of the case resolution agreement operate so that Sinner is ineligible from February 9, 2025 to May 4, 2025 – precisely 12 weeks, or 84 days. Right there, it seems to be a contrived deal of magnificent proportions.
The world’s best player is only required to sit out some part of the 2025 professional tennis season, preceding the northern summer, and wedged during a time of the year of trifling consequence in professional tennis.
WADA’s appeal against the ITIA tribunal’s decision at first instance wasn’t an unmeritorious appeal: the agency’s argument was straightforward and sound; that the finding of the independent tribunal that cleared the player represented a wrong application of the rules around what constitutes the complete defence of “no fault or negligence”.
It wasn’t disputed that two urine samples, given by Sinner in March 2024, each tested positive for the presence of the metabolite of the banned Clostebol. It wasn’t disputed that Sinner ended up having Clostebol in his system consequent to having received a remedial massage from his employed physiotherapist. Nobody contends Sinner meant to use Clostebol; nobody reckons he cheated.
What was challenged is whether it’s proper to determine the player does, by definition and based on the facts, bear “no fault or negligence”. Sinner will always fail on any such defence, unless he proves he discharged his non-delegable duty to exercise utmost caution; that he did all he could do and left no stone unturned, and then still got pinged.
On the evidence brought to the ITIA tribunal at first instance, Sinner’s employed fitness coach apparently gave the medical spray to Sinner’s employed physiotherapist to treat a cut on the physiotherapist’s hand, accidently inflicted.
The physiotherapist used the spray but didn’t bother to inspect any label or cross-reference the listed ingredients against any WADA prohibited list. Which was entirely inconsequential until the physiotherapist gave the player a series of “full-body massages” over a period of nine days, or thereabouts, while he was applying the spray.
The WADA Code’s definition of no fault or negligence explicitly says in context that Sinner must prove he didn’t know or suspect, and couldn’t reasonably have known or suspected, even with the exercising of utmost caution, that he used or was administered the prohibited substance. Contrastingly, fault is defined to include any lack of care appropriate to a particular situation.
What then is meant by saying that it is on the athlete to demonstrate they couldn’t reasonably have known or suspected, even with the exercise of utmost caution, that someone (in Sinner’s case, an employed physiotherapist) had infected them with a prohibited substance? The answer is determinative; that was WADA’s appeal in a nutshell.
Three months on the sideline, at a highly convenient time, is the deal of the century for Sinner. Kicking the matter down the road until after a successful defence of his Australian Open crown is shrewd.
We haven’t seen all the evidence in the case file put before the ITIA tribunal; we don’t have access to the totality of what WADA analysed in determining that a ban of three months is properly representative of the seriousness of Sinner’s doping violation and his degree of fault – such degree that, obviously, is higher than the ITIA’s finding that he bears no fault and no negligence whatsoever.
But three months? That’s got a stench. Triple the length of that ban, and you’re probably in the appropriate zone. The champions in all of this are Sinner’s lawyers. Absolute gold class. Well played.
