Here is the result in plain text:
At some point during the last 12 months, men’s tennis world No. 1 Jannik Sinner changed everything in the anti-doping world. The morning of Feb. 15, after late-night discussions between Sinner’s legal team and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the two-time Grand Slam champion came out with a three-month ban for two anti-doping rule violations, both positive tests for the banned anabolic steroid, clostebol. Sinner, 23, is banned from competing professionally and from attending professional tennis events from Feb. 9 until May 4 inclusive. He and his legal team have contributed to a massive change for all athletes who claim — and can prove on the balance of probability — that they unintentionally allowed a prohibited substance into their bodies.
In case after case brought to appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), WADA has pushed back on anti-doping defenses built around proportionality — that a punishment should be weighted according to the specific circumstances — arguing that its code accounts for that proportionality.
And then, along came Sinner, who neither tennis anti-doping authorities found, nor WADA argued, had intentionally doped. A tribunal convened by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) did not ban him at all; WADA appealed that decision to CAS, which set a hearing for April this year. Then, under a case resolution agreement through Article 10.8.2 of the WADA code, Sinner came away with a three-month ban perfectly sandwiched between his win at the Australian Open and the start of the clay season’s most important tournaments.
His ban is 85 days, slightly short of three months because of credit for two provisional suspensions attached to each of his positive tests. He will return to tennis just before the Italian Open in Rome, a men’s and women’s 1,000-level event and the prelude to the second Grand Slam of the year, the French Open at Roland Garros.
That penalty is far below the suspension of 12 to 24 months that the WADA code calls for cases of “no significant fault or negligence” that involve a banned substance and not a contaminated product — such as five-time women’s champion Iga Swiatek’s case, in which she was banned for a month after proving that her melatonin, a sleep medication, was contaminated with a banned substance. In the weeks leading up to the case resolution agreement between Sinner and WADA, it had reiterated publicly that one year was the minimum. When the agreement was done, WADA rationalized it using the proportionality against that it had previously pushed back.
“This was a paradigm case,” said James Fitzgerald, the chief spokesperson for WADA. “It would have been very harsh for the athlete to be sanctioned for a year or more for the level of fault.”
There could be more cases like Sinner’s before too long. WADA is drafting changes to its code that would allow for lesser penalties in similar instances of unintentional doping. In addition, after using its special powers to reach a settlement outside the proscribed sentences in such a high-profile case, more athletes who claim to have doped unintentionally are likely to ask for the same treatment Sinner received.
For decades, nearly every athlete found to have been at some level of fault for an unintentional anti-doping rule violation was looking at a minimum of a one-year suspension. Only the intervention of CAS could prevent that, which required an athlete to appeal against a penalty from either WADA, which oversees doping cases across sports, or from the organizations that oversee anti-doping in individual sports.
For many anti-doping officials, this case has inflamed long-standing concerns about the disparity in the way athletes are treated under the code. “WADA cut a smelly deal, using a little-known backdoor provision,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), a longtime critic of WADA.
Other athletes have also expressed dissatisfaction with the way Sinner’s case was handled. “Many believe there was favoritism,” said Novak Djokovic. “I hope that the next time, the players will be able to do that — ‘speak to WADA.’ I hope that this is going to create a precedent by which everyone will have the opportunity to better defend themselves.”
Source link
