Follow usSimona Halep, the former Wimbledon and French Open champion, expressed confidence in her imminent return to tennis following her departure from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) after three days of proceedings. The purpose of the appeal was to challenge a doping suspension that posed a potential threat to her career.
Speaking to reporters outside the CAS in Lausanne, Switzerland, the 32-year-old Romanian conveyed her belief that the truth would emerge, and she anticipated being back on the court soon. Halep had been under provisional suspension since October 2022, having tested positive for roxadustat, a banned substance that stimulates red blood cell production, during the 2022 U.S. Open.
In addition to the U.S. Open incident, tennis anti-doping authorities charged Halep with another doping offense the previous year due to irregularities in her athlete biological passport (ABP), a monitoring method for various blood parameters. Howard Jacobs, Halep’s lawyer, stated that CAS had considered her arguments, but the timeline for the court’s ruling remained uncertain.
Halep attributed her positive test at the U.S. Open to contaminated licensed supplements and accused the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) of charging her with an ABP violation based on the disclosure of her identity by the assessing experts. An independent tribunal acknowledged Halep’s claim of a contaminated supplement but determined that the volume she consumed could not have led to the concentration of roxadustat detected in her positive sample.
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