Is tennis cooked? No, but the temperature is being turned up

It strikes me that Nick Kyrgios has a raging proclivity for hyperbole; and also, that he relishes the calamity of it all.

For Kyrgios to opine on X that the entire sport of tennis is “COOKED” – is that a reasonable assessment of the current state of affairs? A dispassionate prognostication? Or nothing of the sort?

Bernard Tomic enthralling everyone with another comeback narrative – that’s positively sizzling, but that’s not the focus of Kyrgios’ thesis. This is …

Case 1: The Polish women’s world’s No.2-ranked player and four-time French Open champion Iga Swiatek tests positive in August 2024 to a prohibited substance. Banned for a month.

Swiatek tested positive for trimetazidine, the same metabolic modulator which earned Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva a four-year prohibition – the equivalent of a life sentence in that sport.

The same contaminant which apparently, according to the Chinese secret police, was during 2021 sprinkled in the kitchen of a hotel in China, infecting 23 athletes residing there while competing in the Shijiazhuang Chinese Invitational.

Credit: Artwork: Kate Letch

Case 2: The dominant world No.1 men’s tennis player, Jannik Sinner – like Swiatek, just 23 years old. Triumphant in this year’s Australian Open and US Open. All in spite of the maelstrom associated with being exonerated by reason of a lack of fault or negligence on the player’s part, by the independent tribunal of the International Tennis Integrity Agency, after twice recording positive for the presence of the anabolic agent, Clostebol.

That ITIA decision remains subject to an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The argument being the first decision constitutes an incorrect application of the universal anti-doping rules; the almost-too-high-to-jump-over bar, that an athlete bears no fault whatsoever, and no negligence whatsoever, despite what’s detected in their system.

Whether the world’s best male tennis player exercised the degree of caution commensurate with the level of his on-court excellence, to trigger the availability of the defence, is incredibly questionable. The prospect of Sinner being ordered to sit in the stands for two years remains a distinct possibility.

For good measure, add in my own Case 3: Stuck somewhere in the middle is the two-time grand slam champion Simona Halep. The former world No.1 now has a world ranking in the 800s.

Positive: Jannik Sinner celebrates winning this year’s US Open.Credit: Getty Images

In September 2022, the Romanian was provisionally suspended by doping authorities after she tested positive for the presence of two banned substances, including roxadustat, which stimulates red blood cell generation and the body’s production of erythropoietin, the blood booster loved by cheating cyclists.

In contrast to Sinner’s and Swiatek’s cases, Halep was banned for four years, reduced to nine months upon her partially successful appeal to the CAS (the case regarding the second prohibited substance was thrown out).

However, does all this mean tennis is “cooked”, to any greater extent than any other sport? By way of comparison, it’s inexplicable that those 23 Chinese swimmers won’t ever be asked to answer to an independent arbiter, as to why they all had the same substance pumping around their bloodstream, as did Swiatek and Kamila Valieva. Is swimming “cooked”?

But that debate notwithstanding, the reputational carnage associated with the sport’s prepotent male player and his preeminent female counterpart both being done for doping in 2024, and both being rapped over the knuckles with a twig, is immeasurable. It’s a shocking look for tennis.

Ball kids pose with Iga Swiatek after her French Open victory.Credit: AP

The outcomes, that Sinner’s and then Swiatek’s adjudicated sanctions – respectively, an eliminated period of ineligibility and a one-month holiday, served mostly under the cloak of secrecy – each were announced after the findings, does nothing to cultivate faith in tennis’s integrity systems.

There are important reasons why these matters do occur under the cloak of confidentiality, to protect athletes’ interests. The flipside however is that the decisions announced must withstand reasonable scrutiny.

In September 2022, another Italian tennis player, Stefano Battaglino, also tested positive for the metabolites of clostebol. Just like Sinner. And also just like Sinner, Battaglino contended that he’d ingested the substance through a physiotherapist giving him a rub-down.

To be distinguished from Sinner’s outcome, Battaglino couldn’t prove his arguments, based on available evidence. Also dissimilar to Sinner’s outcome, Battaglino was banned for four years. His CAS appeal failed.

Though they’re both professional tennis players and Italians, that’s where the fork in the road is. Because also for comparison purposes, the ATP Tour’s official data records show that throughout his career, Sinner has amassed US$34 million in prizemoney. Battaglino wasn’t ever ranked within the world’s top 700 players; his total career prizemoney is less than Sinner and his entourage would spend on restaurants in a month.

One is compelled to question whether this disparity in the financial resources at the disposal of each player operates as a decisive factor in each player’s ability to legally defend their positions.

Next, something needs to be said about Halep, and her Instagram protestations this last week, about the injustice suffered by her; that the ITIA has “done absolutely everything to destroy” her, despite the evidence relevant to her case.

On the surface, one must ask whether there’s at least something in this. Swiatek received a one-month ban, after she established that the trimetazidine was found in her sample because she used an over-the-counter product. Purchased in Poland, it contained an undisclosed and banned contaminant.

Halep proved in the CAS on appeal that she tested positive for the presence of roxadustat, as a result of the player using a supplement product labelled as Keto MCT, which was contaminated with the undisclosed prohibited roxadustat.

Romania’s Simona Halep had her four-year suspension reduced to nine months on appeal.Credit: Getty

Each player proved they weren’t guilty of any significant fault or negligence. Yet that’s not a complete defence – where an athlete proves they aren’t guilty of any significant fault or negligence, and then also proves their violation stems from the use of a contaminated product, the possible sanction ranges from a mere reprimand to two years on the sidelines, depending on the degree of the athlete’s not-significant fault.

Swiatek and Halep each were found to be at fault to a degree; Halep just more so. Swiatek had used the same product for a long time; this time it was sourced in a different country and manufactured in a different place. Halep was using a supplement for the first time.

Halep turned to her physiotherapist and tennis coach for advice and guidance about the use of Keto MCT. Neither is qualified as a doctor, sports dietician or as anything else that’s relevantly useful. Neither of them consulted other people who might be qualified.

However, Swiatek was under the direct care of a doctor since 2019, including in relation to the player’s difficulty handling jet-lag associated with travel between tournaments. It was the doctor who recommended the use of the product which contained the contaminant as sold over the counter in Poland.

Squarely against Swiatek though, when she provided her sample in August and was asked to declare all the medications, supplements and vitamins she was using, she listed not less than 14 different things but not the product she attributed all blame to, once her test results returned.

The cases of Swiatek and Halep aren’t the same. They’re different; all such cases turn on their own facts. Halep wasn’t hard done by.

Conversely, it might be a worrying time for Swiatek, just as it is for Sinner. A sanction so insignificant as a one-month enforced holiday appears seriously out of whack to the point that WADA may well appeal. COOKED? No. Unedifying? Definitely.

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