Mathieu Warnier, Media365: published on Sunday December 15, 2024 at 10:30 p.m.
While Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek both underwent positive tests in 2024, Adrian Mannarino said he no longer believed in the fight against doping in tennis.
The 2024 tennis season will remain tainted by the shadow of doping. Last March, Jannik Sinner tested positive twice for an anabolic product. Pleading involuntary contamination, the Italian was cleared by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) but the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ended up appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with a procedure which will extend into 2025. Then, during the month of August, it was Iga Swiatek who saw a doping test give a positive result for trimetazidine. The Pole was then suspended for a month. Two high-profile cases which demonstrate that tennis is not immune to doping but, above all, that sports authorities are sometimes opaque on this subject. What made Adrian Mannarino react, interviewed this Sunday on the air of RMC. “I no longer believe in Santa Claus,” said the 66th player in the world. If there are those who want to believe it, they can believe it. It’s not really my thing. »
Mannarino doubts ATP and WTA
If he willingly wishes to “give them the benefit of the doubt”, the native of Soisy-sous-Montmorency still notes that there have been “two positive tests on the 300 best in the world and they are the two number ones” . “Inadvertently, you can take the wrong tablet or the wrong vitamin, but it’s surprising,” he added in response to the theories put forward by both Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek to the competent authorities. Adrian Mannarino is also not kind to the ATP and the WTA, admitting to having “doubts” as to the way in which matters linked to doping can be managed and assuring that the latter “took care of all that for the to pass themselves off as clean athletes who are victims of all this.” While he is in the home stretch of his career, the Habs affirmed that if his younger opponents “are not clean”, “it becomes complicated” to find the motivation while he sees himself “every morning getting up at 36 limping.”