World Anti Doping Agency changes its regulations about accidental contamination in doping cases

This comes after the controversy surrounding Jannik Sinner and Iga Świątek's doping cases, presumed accidental.
Text: Javier Escribano
Published 2024-12-11

Two prominent tennis figures were involved in doping cases and were acquitted or penalised with the minimum sanction: Jannik Sinner, men's nº1, and more recently Iga Świątek, women's nº2: both were found positive on banned substance, but deemed unintentional: accidental contamination from other products.

Those verdicts were critiziced by many tennis players, who think the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) gave the players favourable treatment, while fearing other tennis players with less resources and money to prepare a defence would have been found guilty or given harsher penalties (Świątek reportedly paid over 80,000 euros in lawyers and tests).

In September 2024, World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) appealed the case of Jannik Sinner, saying the finding of "no fault or negligence" was not correct under the applicable rules and seeking a susension of up to two years, something that would shake the tennis world for the Australian and US Open winner.

However, at the same time WADA is planning some changes to its policies, relating the cases of involuntary contaminations, although those changes won't go into effect until January 1, 2027. Sinner's case will likely be closed by then.

These changes could theoretically have benefitted Świątek -wouldn't matter as her case is now closed-, because WADA will change the terminology: instead of "contaminated product" they will talk about "unpredictable source of a prohibited substance", lessening the guilt by athletes who ingest banned substances through unexpected sources -in the case of Świątek, it was a sleeping medicament that unexpectedly contained traces of trimetazidine.

However, as reported by Ubitennis, Sinner case was different, as his banned substance, Clostebol, was transmited in his body not by ingest, but by contact from his physiotherapist, who used a lotion called Trifodermin, which confirms Clostebol as one of its ingredients.

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