Jannik Sinner case dividing tennis with lack of transparency at its core
Jannik Sinner took his first steps on the clay courts of the Madrid Open on Saturday 20 April. By that time, although the rankings did not yet reflect it, Sinner was undeniably the best player in the world. He had won his first grand slam title at the Australian Open in January before embarking on a spectacular, consistent run. His pre‑tournament interviews in the subsequent days were dominated by his budding rivalry with Carlos Alcaraz, a match-up that many believe will define the next generation of men’s tennis.
What only Sinner, his team and the anti-doping authorities knew then, however, was that until the day of his first training session in Madrid, he had been banned from entering the tournament grounds or any other official grounds or courts because of the automatic provisional suspension he had received in the aftermath of him twice testing positive for the banned substance clostebol.
None of that information was made public until this week when the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) and Sinner’s team revealed jointly that the 23-year-old had been found to bear no fault or negligence for the presence of clostebol in two of his anti-doping test samples taken in March. It is significant enough that the No 1 men’s tennis player has twice tested positive for a banned substance, but it is an even more remarkable situation due to the silence that had led up to this revelation.
Most anti-doping cases end up with a player receiving notification of a failed test and then being provisionally suspended until an independent tribunal has ruled on the case at the end of a lengthy, public process.
In Sinner’s case, he was notified for his first positive test on 4 April, just four days after he won the Miami Open. Sinner immediately filed an urgent application to lift the provisional suspension and his request to do so was granted a day later, meaning the ban was not publicly announced.
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