Simona Halep cleared to return to court after four-year doping ban reduced
Former world No 1 Simona Halep has been cleared to resume her tennis career with immediate effect after a four-year ban for doping was reduced to nine months following an appeal.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled partly in favour of Halep after the two-time grand slam champion appealed against a four-year ban imposed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA).
Halep, 32,blamed contaminated nutritional supplementsafter testing positive for thebanned substance Roxadustat at the 2022 US Open.
In making its decision, the three-person CAS panel ruled that Halep’s anti-doping violations “were not intentional” and she “bore no significant fault or negligence”.
It decided Halep “established, on the balance of probabilities” that Roxadustat, a blood-boosting substance similar to EPO, had “entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement”.
The panel also dismissed a separate charge, also brought forward by the ITIA, after investigators found irregularities in her athlete biological passport (ABP).
The Romanian, who won the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019, feared her career would be over if CAS upheld her suspension and vowed to “fight for the truth”.
Having already served a provisional suspension since October 2022, and with her new nine-month ban having already expired in July 2023, Halep has been cleared to make an immediate return to court.
Halep strenuously denied wrongdoing after testing positive for Roxadustat following her first-round defeat at the US Open on 29 August 2022.
