How Sinner’s suspension changed the tennis world
For a vast majority of the players, the worry of being caught with a positive dope test has become all too real
Mumbai: A doctored photograph of Jannik Sinner is doing the rounds on social media. It is a close-up of the tennis world No.1 eyes, with a steely look of unwavering focus.
“There is a moment when silence gives way to the echo of a new beginning,” reads a translation of the caption. “That time is now.”
The image was published by the Italian tennis federation.
For a player returning to the tennis tour after serving a three-month doping suspension, Sinner is being handed a hero’s welcome at the Italian Open – his home event. Over ten thousand spectators had bought tickets to watch his first open practice session on Monday, which was broadcast live on Italian television. Later he was felicitated, along with the rest of the Italian Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup-winning teams.
As the three-time Grand Slam champion gets set to play his first professional match since the ban, on Saturday against Argentina’s Mariano Navone, the rest of the tennis world remains shaken. The cause of the tension though has shifted. Earlier, it was because of the argument that Sinner got away with the entire doping episode lightly.
But now that Sinner and Iga Swiatek – two high-profile players – have tested positive for dope, there is a cascading effect. The worry of being caught with a positive dope test has become all too real.
“If I feel sick, I avoid taking anything because I’m afraid of testing positive later,” said world No.17 Andrey Rublev during the Madrid Masters a fortnight ago. “I’ve become wary of taking medication. I’m lucky to be able to talk to doctors, but that’s not the case for everyone.”
The paranoia has reached a stage where players are ready to live with discomfort rather than risk being caught with a banned substance, unwittingly, in their system. Take the case of Emma Raducanu for example, who refused treatment for an insect bite during the Australian Open earlier this year.
“(It) flared up and swelled up really a lot. Someone was giving me this antiseptic spray to try to ease the bites. I didn’t want to take it,” she had said, as quoted by The Guardian. “I didn’t want to spray it. I was just left there with my swollen ankle and hand. I was like: ‘I’m just going to tough it out because I don’t want to risk it.’”
Even food intake, the one controllable, comes with an element of risk. In 2018, former men’s doubles world No.1 Robert Farah had tested positive for a banned anabolic steroid. The substance entered his system through a piece of home-cooked meat he had consumed a night prior to when his sample was collected for the dope test.
“We spend a lot of time away from home, and we don’t know what we’re eating since we sometimes eat at a buffet,” said world No.5 Jasmine Paolini during the Madrid Masters.
Regardless of how much care a player can take, there are still avenues for contamination. Sinner’s case was not the only controversial doping episode from 2024. Swiatek, who was the women’s world No.1 at the time, had also tested positive for banned substance trimetazidine in August. In the Pole’s case however, she argued that the medication she had been taking, for jet lag and sleep issues, had been contaminated.
Swiatek, a five-time Grand Slam champion, was handed a one-month ban during which she was allowed to compete at the WTA Finals and Billie Jean King Cup Finals, before completing the sentence in the off-season when she would anyway not be playing.
In Sinner’s case, he had twice tested positive for clostebol last March, but successfully challenged a suspension. He was allowed to compete while the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) investigated the case in the backdrop – keeping the entire episode under wraps till August, when the body announced that Sinner had been “cleared of any wrongdoing.”
It was only after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) that Sinner, the reigning US Open and Australian Open champion, “accepted” a three-month ban which ended on May 4. The banning period, however, did not see him miss any Grand Slam, the sport’s premier events.
There is a sense of animosity that has grown among the players against Sinner.
Speaking to Italian TV station RA, Sinner last week said that he felt “uncomfortable” at the Australian Open “because it seemed to me that the other players looked at me differently. For a moment, I even thought about giving up everything.”
The thought of Sinner, and even Siwatek, getting preferential treatment in their respective cases may still reverberate in the tennis fraternity. But the dangers of the dope test has become a harsh reality.
