For Jannik Sinner and the sport he dominates, this is a nightmare spiralling out of control
The problem with Jannik Sinner avoiding a minimum two-year ban for failing two drugs tests was that few comprehended how he and his lawyers had managed it.
When a runaway world No 1 is cleared of any fault in a doping inquiry, you would typically expect to hear only a chorus of kinship and understanding. Except reactions from the Italian’s peers ranged from scepticism to outright incredulity. Where a troubled Novak Djokovic demanded “clear protocols”, Nick Kyrgios derided the explanation for how the prohibited steroid clostebol had ended up in the player’s system. “Massage cream,” the Australian scoffed. “Yeah nice.”
Now, far more seriously for Sinner, it turns out the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is none too convinced either. In a remarkable intervention, the highest global authority in these cases has declared the original finding of “no fault or negligence” to be “not correct under the applicable rules”, announcing it would seek a ban for Sinner of one to two years at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
No wonder this season’s two-time major champion looked hollow and haggard as he digested the statement after his latest victory in Beijing. For him and for the sport he dominates, this is a nightmare spiralling out of control.
Quite simply, trust in the system that let Sinner continue playing without penalty has evaporated. Wada plainly does not trust tennis to mark its own homework on such issues, given the widespread concerns over how Sinner was investigated, with neither of his provisional suspensions lasting more than three days and no public disclosure about the matter for six months.
The sheer opacity of it all sits uneasily with the fact that players further down tennis’ food chain, without the luxury of expensive lawyers on speed-dial, have to endure months, if not years, of seeing their reputations being publicly trashed before they have any chance to clear their names.
Questions over Naldi and Ferrara
While the 33-page ruling issued last month by an independent tribunal of the International Tennis Integrity Agency was far from cursory, it failed to provide adequate answers to some crucial questions. Why, for example, was no anti-doping rule violation established against Umberto Ferrara, Sinner’s fitness trainer, or Giacomo Naldi, his physiotherapist, for possessing clostebol – an anabolic steroid with potential for performance enhancement – in the first place?
Sinner can claim to have dealt with this concern, given that he subsequently sacked them both. But this does nothing to illuminate why there were no formal claims of wrongdoing against Ferrara or Naldi after clostebol, contained in a medical spray called Trofodermin – available over the counter in Italy for healing cuts – was found to have been in the coach’s washbag at Indian Wells in March.
The World Anti-Doping Code, Wada’s canonical text, leaves no doubt that the mere possession of a prohibited substance without a valid therapeutic use exemption is deemed to be a breach. So why have neither Ferrara nor Naldi been questioned?
Sinner’s central argument was that he had been let down by rogue operators in his camp. And yet this reasoning is also open to scrutiny. On the one hand, Sinner can invite sympathy by insisting that he was unwittingly contaminated. But on the other, there is a school of thought that anti-doping responsibilities extend beyond the individual. Take the wording of the ruling: “The player is responsible for the actions around them as well as their own.” Given this pronouncement, is the Italian’s deflection of blame to his team sufficiently plausible?
A two-tier approach to anti-doping?
These are not the only procedural gripes. One curious element of the document clearing him is the admission that one of the three independent experts involved knew that it was Sinner who had failed the tests. “The player’s identity was not known by two of the experts,” it stated. Why was this not assured with all three, though? Is it not a fundamental principle in these investigations that anonymity assures impartial treatment?
This is before you even reach the impression that tennis’s anti-doping crusade is a dismally two-tier affair. While Sinner was hastily propelled towards absolution, Britain’s Tara Moore, a far less high-profile player, had her career put on hold for 19 months before the ITIA eventually accepted that her positive tests for nandrolone and boldenone were due to her having consumed the meat of steroid-dosed cattle.
It was problematic enough that Sinner became the US Open champion with so few of his fellow players prepared to express confidence in how his doping case had been handled. But with Wada’s move, the storm clouds grow darker still. There is a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, that Sinner could win a second-straight Australian Open crown in January as Wada looks to throw him out of the sport for up to two years. It is difficult to imagine a more sobering indictment of tennis’s anti-doping protocols – and of how little faith they inspire.