World No. 1 Jannik Sinner has agreed to a 3-month ban, admitting "part responsibility" for his team's mistakes that prompted him to test positive for clostebol twice in March 2024.
Sinner was previously banned from playing for two years, after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for the original ruling of the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) in August 2024.
But WADA later withdrew the appeal and reached a settlement with Sinner, allowing the tennis player to accept a 3-month ban.
In another notable incident last year, the 5- Grand Slam winner Swiatek accepted a 1-month ban after testing positive for trimetazidine.
"Most players don't feel it's fair. They feel there is a bias towards top players who can hire good lawyers to influence the outcome," Djokovic said while competing in the Qatar Open tennis tournament.
In contrast to Sinner and Swiatek, former world No. 1 women's tennis player Simona Halep was banned from competition by ITIA for 4 years in 2022, after testing positive for the drug roxfordustat blood-fortifying powder.
Halep argued that it was the result of a toxic supplement and successfully appealed to the CAS. Halep's sentence was later reduced to nine months. Currently, this tennis player has retired.
"Simona Halep and Tara Moore, along with several other less famous players, have struggled to resolve their issues for years or have been banned from playing for years. Obviously, there are many unreasonable points between the cases, Djokovic said.
According to the Serbian tennis player, it is time for the world tennis authorities to change their anti-doping system, in order to bring transparency and fairness to this sport.
It is time to review the current anti-doping system, as it is clearly not really effective.
I hope that in the near future, tournament management agencies and the tennis ecosystem will work together to cooperate and find a more effective way to solve these processes.
If you handle each case individually or independently, as what is happening, there will be no consistency, no transparency and in some cases, there will be transparency, in some cases, no.
With the current way of handling things, tennis players, both men and women, in general, lack confidence in WADA and ITIA, as well as the entire process.
