Novak Djokovic called for a comprehensive reform of tennis’s anti-doping protocols, highlighting disparities in the handling of cases involving prominent players Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek compared to lower-ranked competitors.
The world’s top-ranked player, Sinner, received a three-month suspension on Saturday, acknowledging “partial responsibility” for his team’s errors resulting in two positive clostebol tests in March last year.
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Initially cleared by the International Tennis Integrity Agency in August, Sinner faced a potential two-year suspension when WADA appealed to CAS. However, WADA unexpectedly dropped its appeal, settling for a three-month ban.
In a related development last year, Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension following a positive test for trimetazidine, a prohibited cardiac medication.
“There’s a majority of the players that I’ve talked to in the locker room, not just in the last few days, but also last few months, that are not happy with the way this whole process has been handled,” said Djokovic. “A majority of the players don’t feel that it’s fair. A majority of the players feel like there is favouritism happening. It seems like, it appears that you can almost affect the outcome if you are a top player, if you have access to the top lawyers.”
By contrast, former world number one Simona Halep received a four-year suspension from ITIA in 2022 after testing positive for roxadustat. She successfully reduced her ban to nine months through CAS after proving contaminated supplements were responsible.
“Simona Halep and (Britain’s) Tara Moore and some other players that are maybe less known that have been struggling to resolve their cases for years, or have gotten the ban for years,” said Djokovic. “There is so much inconsistencies between the cases.”
Djokovic, set to compete at the Qatar Open following his injury withdrawal from the Australian Open semi-finals, advocates for systematic changes.
“Right now it’s a ripe time for us to really address the system, because the system and the structure obviously doesn’t work (for) anti-doping, it’s obvious,” he said. “I hope that in the next period of the near future that the governing bodies are going to come together, of our tours and the tennis ecosystem, and try to find a more effective way to deal with these processes. It’s inconsistent, and it appears to be very unfair.”
“If you are going to treat every case individually or independently, which is what’s happening, then there’s no consistency, then there is no transparency, and some cases are transparent, some are not,” he continued. “The problem is that right now there is a lack of trust generally from the tennis players, both male and female, towards WADA and ITIA, and the whole process.”
