Simona Halep's lawyer breaks silence: "ITIA had requested a suspension ranging from six to eight years"
In recent months, doping cases have taken center stage in the world of tennis. World number one Jannik Sinner tested positive for clostebol during Indian Wells last year and accepted a three-month suspension until May 2025 due to negligence by his team.
On her part, Iga Swiatek, currently second to Sabalenka in the WTA rankings, experienced a similar situation in Cincinnati, testing positive for trimetazidine. The Polish player was suspended for a month before being able to resume competition at the start of the season.
Another prominent name in the sport who has been involved in a doping case in recent years is Simona Halep. Absent from the circuit between the US Open 2022 and the WTA 1000 tournament in Miami in 2024, the Romanian, a former world number one and winner of two Grand Slam titles in her career, was initially suspended for four years in September 2023.
In a statement, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced the news after Halep tested positive for roxadustat a year earlier in New York.
Ultimately, after defending herself in court, Halep saw her suspension reduced to nine months, allowing her to make her return in Miami last year, where she was defeated in three sets by Paula Badosa.
Since then, Simona Halep has ended her career during the Cluj-Napoca tournament in early February, hampered by recurring knee and shoulder injuries in recent months. For local media, Bogdan Stoica, Halep's lawyer throughout the proceedings, made new revelations regarding the case in which his client was involved.
"We were happy when we learned that the sentence had been reduced. The news of the decision was communicated to all of us, it was absolute happiness. It's probably the feeling that anyone who is unjustly convicted experiences.
Simona is not only an exceptional athlete but also a true role model for society. The public supported her, as did the sponsors who never believed for a moment that Simona could have done anything prohibited.
However, this relief is not as intense now. Because let's not forget that the ITIA, the organization that prosecutes athletes and demands possible sanctions, proposed a much longer suspension.
The ITIA had requested a suspension ranging from six to eight years! The victory is not so great compared to what happened in the cases of Iga Swiatek and Jannik Sinner. What is important to note here is the verdict to reduce the suspension to nine months, which takes into account contamination.
Being contaminated means that you came into contact, quite accidentally and without realizing it, with a product containing a banned substance.
The President of the court is an Australian who, beyond her legal training, also had a background in chemistry.
I think this was a huge advantage because she perfectly understood what contamination is, what blood tests mean, and everything else. In the end, the case was not that complicated.
The sanction applied is based on the level of negligence of the athlete. It is also analyzed based on the history of contamination. Whether they knew or not, the athlete is guilty.
When they announced that the suspension was reduced to nine months, Simona had already been suspended for one year and seven months," he elaborated on the Digi Sport set in recent hours.
