Simona Halep given four-year ban from tennis over doping offences

Former Wimbledon champion and world number one Simona Halep has been banned for four years for two doping offences.

The Romanian, who triumphed at the All England Club in 2019, had been provisionally suspended since last October having tested positive for the blood-boosting drug roxadustat at the 2022 US Open.

She was subsequently charged with irregularities in her Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) and both charges have been upheld following an independent tribunal.

Romanian tennis player Simona Halep has been suspended for a period of four years following breaches of the Tennis Anti-Doping Program.https://t.co/dO3PdIruyF pic.twitter.com/cLRU7EhkjY

— International Tennis Integrity Agency (@itia_tennis) September 12, 2023

Halep, who has taken to social media several times over the past year to voice unhappiness at the time the process was taking, gave evidence at the tribunal in London on June 28 and 29.

She argued roxadustat had got into her system via a contaminated supplement but, while the tribunal accepted she had taken such a substance, it “determined the volume the player ingested could not have resulted in the concentration of roxadustat found in the positive sample”.

The Athlete Biological Passport programme collates various blood parameters over time in an effort to spot any inconsistencies in the data that could indicate a possible doping offence.

The charge was also upheld, with the tribunal deciding “they had no reason to doubt the unanimous ‘strong opinion’ reached by each of the three independent Athlete Passport Management Unit  experts that ‘likely doping’ was the explanation for the irregularities in Halep’s profile.”

The 31-year-old, who also won the French Open in 2018 and is the highest-profile tennis