Iga Swiatek doesn’t agree there are grounds to compare her doping case to the ones of Simona Halep and Jannik Sinner as the world No. 2 believes all of them were in “completely different situations.”
In late November, it was announced that one of the Pole’s samples from August came back as positive for trimetazidine (TMZ): After being given a provisional suspension, the 23-year-old successfully explained that the banned substance entered her body because the melatonin medication she was using at the time was contaminated.
The ITIA accepted the explanation and gave Swiatek a symbolic one-month ban after determing that she “bore no significant fault or negligence” for what happened.
When it comes to Sinner, you probably already know very all the details there – he tested positive twice for clostebol in March but quickly determined how it happened – his explanation was fully accepted – and it all resulted in him not getting a single day of suspension.
Before Swiatek and Sinner, Halep tested positive for Roxadustat in 2022 October. After fighting for a year and a half to clear her name, the former world No. 1 was finally successful when her case went to the CAS – who reduced her initial four-year suspension to nine months.
The two recent high-profile doping cases also led to the Romanian taking shots at the ITIA once again and claiming that she was “treated completely differently and unfairly.”
“I know that people need to automatically compare such situations to others that have already happened, but the truth is that each of these cases is completely different. And the process of proving innocence will also be different. It’s hard to compare me to Sinner, to Halep, to Kamil Majchrzak, because each of us is struggling with a different problem,” Swiatek said during her appearance on TVN24.
“I think this is a question more for ITIA than for the player. My fate, just like the fates of others, was in their hands and they decide how each case will turn out, I trust that this process is objective, that everything is done according to the regulations and no one judges a player this way or that way because of his position. But whether it is really like that, I think this is a question for ITIA.”
Iga Swiatek© Polski Zwiazek Tenisowy/Instagram – Fair Use
Halep issued a very strong reaction to the Swiatek news
Throughout her entire case, the 33-year-old Romanian claimed that she provided all the evidence needed to clear her name but that the ITIA just wouldn’t listen to her. Not only that the former world No. 1 didn’t think she deserved to be suspended, but she was also regularly accusing the ITIA of wanting to “destroy” her.
After seeing that Swiatek’s case was handled in secret and that it was ruled in the Pole’s favor, Halep used that as argument for her past claims about the “injustice” she experienced.
“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… I believed in goodness. It was painful, is painful and maybe the injustice that was done to me will always be painful. How is it possible that in identical cases happening around the same time ITIA to have completely different approaches to my detriment,” the Romanian wrote on Instagram when the news about the Pole dropped.
A couple of days after making that post, Halep issued another bombshell statement. Apparently, seeing how the Swiatek case was handled left the 2019 Wimbledon champion so distressed and triggered her traumas about her own doping situation.
“Big pain, big pain. I felt like they [the ITIA] were unfair to me before, but now it’s even more. I was so, so upset and so sad when I saw the situation. It’s just unacceptable, from my point of view. Yeah, I lost my sleep again. I lost it for the two years during the process [of contesting her own doping ban]. Then I got it back. And now, after [what happened], for a few days, yeah, I lost it again. All the negative thinking, negative thoughts, it’s not easy to handle,” Halep told The Telegraph.
In that same interview, the Romanian mentioned that she was specifically hurt by the fact that the ITIA didn’t publicly announce the Swiatek doping news until everything was sealed and done.
Halep may feel unhappy about some things but Swiatek is also evidently convinced that she did nothing wrong.
Tennis World USA