The International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reduced the originally four-year sentence of Romanian tennis player Simona Halepova to nine months. The two-time Grand Slam champion has already served her sentence and can return to tennis.
The 32-year-old Halep was worried that the CAS would not reduce her original sentence and that it would mean the end of her career. According to CAS, Halep took the banned substance roxadustat unintentionally. The Romanian tennis player and winner of the French Open and Wimbledon insisted on her innocence the whole time.
Halep tested positive for roxadustat, a drug against anemia, after the US Open 2022. The accusation itself came in May 2023, when irregularities were also found in her biological passport.
“Having carefully considered all the evidence presented, the CAS panel has decided that Ms. Halep has proven on the balance of probabilities that roxadustat entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated dietary supplement that she took in the days shortly before August 29, 2022,” it said commission.
”Roxadustat, as detected in her sample, came from this contaminated product. As a result, the CAS panel decided that Ms. Halep had also established, on a balance of probabilities, that her anti-doping rule violation was not willful,” the commission added.
Halepová has already avoided a shortened nine-month sentence and can thus return to tennis.
The Czech Tennis Association, which is temporarily led by Jan Stočes, is also solving problems:
TN.cz
