“Done everything to destroy me” – Halep slams ITIA amid Swiatek doping row, claims ‘difference in judgement’
“How is it possible that in identical cases happening around the same time ITIA to have completely different approaches to my detriment”
Simona Halep (Zuma / Panoramic) | Iga Swiatek (Chryslene Caillaud / Panoramic)
Former world No 1 Simona Halep isn’t one bit happy with how International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) has handled Iga Swiatek‘s doping offence.
After Swiatek’s samples failed an out-of-competition dope test for trimetazidine (TMZ) in August 2024, the ITIA ruled “No Significant Fault or Negligence” in the case and barred the Pole from competing on the WTA Tour for just a month.
The world No 2 argued in her defence that the banned substance reached her body through melatonin — a medication that helps with delayed sleep phase — which was contaminated during the production itself. The ITIA accepted Swiatek’s account as true and didn’t punish her severely.
Halep, a two-time Grand Slam champion, found herself in a similar stand-off with ITIA after testing positive for ‘roxadustat’ during the 2022 US Open. She had also argued that she didn’t consume the substance on purpose but ITIA banned her for four years, charging the Romanian with additional offence for irregularities in her athlete biological passport.
Thus, after learning about the ITIA’s verdict in Swiatek’s violation, Halep took to Instagram and slammed the tennis body:
“I’m sitting and trying to understand, but it’s really impossible for me to understand something like this. I stand and ask myself, why is there such a big difference in treatment and judgement? I can’t find and I don’t think there can be a logical answer.
It can only be bad will from ITIA, the organization that has done absolutely everything to destroy me despite the evidence.”
Simona Halep
“How is it possible that in identical cases happening around the same time ITIA to have completely different approaches to my detriment. How could I accept that the WTA and the players council did not want to return me the ranking that I deserved ?”
“I lost two years of my career”
The ITIA had provisionally suspended Halep in October 2022 before slapping her with a four-year ban in September 2023. However, the tennis player knocked on the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s door to overturn ITIA’s ruling and succeeded in getting her punishment reduced to nine months in March 2024.
In her Instagram post, Halep continued expressing her disappointment over missing out on two years of competitive tennis, being a top 10 singles player at the time of her interim suspension:
“I lost two years of my career, I lost many nights when I couldn’t sleep, thoughts, anxiety, questions without answers… but I won justice. It turned out that it was a contamination and that the biological passport was a pure invention. And I won something else, my soul remained clean!! I feel disappointed, I feel mad, I feel frustrated, but I do not feel evil even now.”
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