Simona Halep says ‘big difference’ between way doping cases handled in tennis

Simona Halep has hit out at what she claims is a “big difference” between the way doping cases are handled in tennis.

It was revealed on Thursday that world number two Iga Swiatek had been banned for one month – the majority of it served secretly as a provisional suspension – after testing positive for the angina drug trimetazidine.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency accepted it was caused by contamination of the regulated non-prescription medication melatonin, which Swiatek took for jet lag and sleep issues.

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The news came only three months after men’s world number one Jannik Sinner was cleared of any fault over two positive tests in March, with those failures also not announced at the time.

That led to accusations of a two-tier system within the sport – strongly refuted by tennis authorities – and Halep has now questioned the differences with her own case.

The former Wimbledon champion was banned for four years in September 2023, just over a year after she tested positive for roxadustat, a drug used to treat anaemia, as well as irregularities in her blood passport.

The suspension was reduced to nine months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in March, by which point she had already been out of the game for nearly a year and a half, after they accepted her explanation of a contaminated supplement.

Writing on Instagram, Halep said: “I sit and try to understand but it is really impossible for me to understand something like this.

Step by step, we keep moving forward