Karen Moorhouse, director general of the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), has defended the handling of recent doping cases in tennis, including that of Jannik Sinner, who tested positive for clostebol, an anabolic steroid, a year ago. In a Wednesday interview with ‘AFP’, Moorhouse said, “I feel very comfortable and confident with the way we handled this case”. Sinner was initially acquitted by an independent tribunal, but later accepted a three-month suspension following a settlement with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

CRITICISM OF DELAYS

Regarding criticism of the delay in disclosing the cases of Sinner and Iga Swiatek, who was suspended for a month after testing positive for trimetazidine in August 2024, Moorhouse explained, “We always try to be as transparent as possible while respecting the rules. The communication problems surrounding the Sinner case may have revealed a misunderstanding of our rules on announcing positive tests and provisional suspensions.” According to the ITIA director, “people mistakenly believed that we were announcing positive tests, when in fact we were announcing interim suspensions.”

Moorhouse added that in both cases the rules were respected: “The players appealed their provisional suspension within the ten-day period provided for in our texts. And because their appeal was successful, the provisional suspensions were not made public. If we had done otherwise, we would have broken our own rules.”

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPORTS

The ITIA director also addressed the differences in the handling of doping cases between sports. “Some sports decide to announce provisional suspensions immediately, such as athletics. Others, especially team sports, never announce them. They are waiting until (the accused athlete) is questioned. Tennis has tried to strike a balance with the 10-day rule: if someone appeals (their suspension) within 10 days and wins, it’s not made public,” he explained. However, Moorhouse acknowledged that this rule could change: “This is something we will work on with the tennis world. There are arguments for and arguments against.”

SWIATEK AND HALEP

When asked about the difference in the length of the suspensions of Iga Swiatek (one month) and Simona Halep (four years reduced to nine months on appeal), Moorhouse justified the decisions based on the degree of responsibility of each player. “In the case of Iga Swiatek, the positive test was due to contaminated medication. For us, her degree of responsibility was therefore very limited,” he explained.

As for Halep, whose career ended in February after testing positive for roxadustat in 2022, Moorhouse said, “Halep’s case is extremely complex, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport has admitted that her positive test was due to a contaminated supplement. In determining her degree of liability, the nature of the product in question – it was not a medicine – and the precautions the player had taken to try to limit the risk of contamination were taken into account.”