After the positive control of Jannik Sinner in March, the Polish Iga Świątek, world number 2 and four-time champion at Roland Garros, was sanctioned with a month of suspension for a positive control carried out in August, the International Agency for Integrity indicated this Thursday. of Tennis (ITIA).
“The ITIA confirms that the Polish tennis player Iga Świątek accepted a one-month suspension after a positive control for a prohibited substance, trimetazidine, in a sample taken out of competition in August 2024,” the body wrote in a statement, which accepted the player’s argument that it was due to “contamination of a medication.”
For this reason, the ITIA considered that “the player’s degree of fault” was “the weakest on the spectrum.”
This announcement comes a few months after the case of men’s tennis number 1, Jannik Sinner, who tested positive twice in March and was initially acquitted by the ITIA. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed and Sinner is now under threat of eventual suspension.
Traces of trimetazidine
In the case of Swiatek (23 years old), his suspension was for trimetazidine, the product for which Russian skater Kamila Valieva was suspended for four years and whose doping effects are not fully known.
The substance would come from traces present in the melatonin that he took due to sleep problems due to jet lag, the ITIA explained. The medicine in question was produced and sold in Poland.
The ITIA estimated that “the violation” of the rules “was not intentional” and that is why it decided that month of sanction, which the tennis player would have practically already served because she was provisionally suspended between September 12 and October 4, at the beginning of the procedure.
In those three weeks of provisional suspension, she was unable to participate in three tournaments on the Asian tour, including two in the WTA 1000 category, those in Beijing and Wuhan, both in China. He would only have eight days of suspension left to serve, which would be until December 4, the ITIA states.
Like Sinner, Swiatek now risks that WADA could file an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which would open the door for the case to be re-examined. The Polish Anti-Doping Agency (POLADA) could also file such an appeal.
“WADA will carefully review the decision and reserves the right to appeal,” a WADA spokesperson responded to AFP.
Until now, the ITIA did not make public Swiatek’s positive control “in accordance with the regulations” since the Polish tennis player had appealed her provisional suspension and managed to have it lifted at the time.
‘A shock’
“It was a shock for me. That whole situation caused me a lot of anxiety,” Swiatek explained in a long message in Polish on his social networks.
“There have been many tears and sleepless nights. It is the most difficult experience of my life so far. “It will stay with me forever,” he continued.
“At first I didn’t understand how it was possible. “I had a deep feeling of injustice and the first weeks were really chaotic,” he continued.
“The worst thing was the uncertainty, I didn’t know what would happen to my career, how it would end, if I was going to be allowed to play tennis or not,” Swiatek added. “I couldn’t defend my classification, but the most important thing for me was to prove my innocence.”
