THE INTERNATIONAL TENNIS FEDERATION (ITF) was under the eye of the storm due to a journalistic investigation against him: his officials are accused of warn the players, at intervals, when and where the anti-doping controls would be carried out, as part of a background publication in the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday.
The ITF, according to the investigation, would have allowed several players to reserve time slots before certain tournaments to provide the blood samples for the athlete’s biological passport (ABP). In that sense, there is an alleged privilege that breaks the anti-doping rules: tennis players with this “permission” can hide violations of the Anti-Doping Program (TADP).
“The ITF has invited players to book times for blood doping tests ahead of this year’s Miami Open. The procedure, according to anti-doping experts, makes a big difference in allowing offenders to escape sanctions. Players were also notified that blood samples would be taken ahead of Roland Garros 2019 and the US Open last year. The former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) compared the tennis approach to cycling’s much-criticized failure to expose Lance Armstrong’s years of drug use. the newspaper explained.
In addition, the ITF, one of the seven governing bodies of tennis at the international level, came under suspicion for “inflating” the number of anti-doping controls carried out, especially after the investigation reflected the publication of “misleading” data.
Since last January the ITF anti-doping program was left at the mercy of the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA)born in 2007 under the name of the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), the independent body that investigates cases of match fixing and the tennis betting mafias.
Tour players must provide your location for one hour each of the 365 days of the year, since the rules hold that anti-doping controls must be surprise, a procedure that annoys the vast majority of tennis players.
The article further states that the ITF has never sanctioned a player for anomalies in his biological passport, much less in cases of elite players: “The ITF’s fight against doping has involved some controversy over the last 20 years. Federer revealed, in 2016, that he had been tested just once in ten years during an off-season summer training session in Dubai.”
