Doping, Halep's conviction scares Sinner? Similarities and differences between the two cases
9-month disqualification for the Romanian tennis player. "The physiotherapist is not a doctor", this is the passage of the Tas ruling that can make the Alto Adige native tremble. But there are enormous differences between the two casesJannik Sinner and Simona Halep (Ansa)
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The reasons that led to the disqualification last March of Simona Halep, winner of Roland Garros in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019, former number 1 on the women's tennis circuit, suspended for 9 months for "careless use of a contaminated supplement" have been made public by the Court of Arbitration for Sport .
A sentence that could worry Jannik Sinner, but with the case of the South Tyrolean there are analogies and also strong differences .
The CAS in the ruling emphasizes that the supplement was taken by the Romanian on the advice of her personal physiotherapist "who is not a doctor or a clinician" . The judges in the ruling wonder " why in an environment of such high professionalism issues related to possible problems with anti-doping are entrusted to people who have no experience in this sector ". The athlete, they emphasize, "should have understood the limits of her physiotherapist's qualifications and the fact that a tournament was being played in the United States, on a continent far from hers, cannot justify the failure to consult a specialist and the entrusting of such a delicate task to a person without the necessary medical skills".
So far the analogies, or rather the faults of the personal physiotherapist, just as it was Sinner's physiotherapist who took Trofodermin (ointment containing Clostebol) and massaged the world number 1 without gloves , contaminating him. The Tas has repeatedly underlined the fact that it is inconceivable that an athlete at the top of the sport delegates the use of products at risk of positivity to people who do not have medical skills such as physiotherapists or coaches.
Then there are the huge differences . First of all the decision of the Itia, which acquitted Sinner but had even sentenced Simona Halep to 4 years for the use of Roxadustat , which she had tested positive for in a test that took place in 2022, after the US Open. The Tas partially exonerated her (the ban went from 4 years to 9 months), but accusing her of careless use . True, in some ways it is the same accusation that could be leveled at Sinner . But the Italian, unlike Halep, did not take the substance, he was contaminated by it , it was passed to him by mistake through a massage. Finally, the biological passport: the Italian's is regular, Simona Halep's is irregular .
What is the biological passport? It is an anti-doping technique that consists of tracking some parameters of the athlete's blood and urine over time, in order to monitor any anomalous trends of these parameters compared to the typical profile of the athlete . It does not directly detect the intake of a doping substance, but identifies the anomalous effects that such a substance can induce on the organism, unmasking its intake.
In essence, the difference could be summed up in one sentence. Simona Halep took dope (unintentionally, the judges decided), Jannik Sinner did not.
(Unioneonline/L)