At some point during the last 12 months, men’s tennis world No. 1 Jannik Sinner changed everything in the anti-doping world.
The morning of Feb. 15, after late-night discussions between Sinner’s legal team and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the two-time Grand Slam champion came out with a three-month ban for two anti-doping rule violations, both positive tests for the banned anabolic steroid, clostebol. Sinner, 23, is banned from competing professionally and from attending professional tennis events from Feb. 9 until May 4 inclusive. He and his legal team have contributed to a massive change for all athletes who claim — and can prove on the balance of probability — that they unintentionally allowed a prohibited substance into their bodies.
In case after case brought to appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), WADA has pushed back on anti-doping defenses built around proportionality — that a punishment should be weighted according to the specific circumstances — arguing that its code accounts for that proportionality.
And then, along came Sinner, who neither tennis anti-doping authorities found, nor WADA argued, had intentionally doped. A tribunal convened by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) did not ban him at all; WADA appealed that decision to CAS, which set a hearing for April this year. Then, under a case resolution agreement through Article 10.8.2 of the WADA code, Sinner came away with a three-month ban perfectly sandwiched between his win at the Australian Open and the start of the clay season’s most important tournaments.
His ban is 85 days, slightly short of three months because of credit for two provisional suspensions attached to each of his positive tests. He will return to tennis just before the Italian Open in Rome, a men’s and women’s 1,000-level event and the prelude to the second Grand Slam of the year, the French Open at Roland Garros.
That penalty is far below the suspension of 12 to 24 months that the WADA code calls for cases of “no significant fault or negligence” that involve a banned substance and not a contaminated product — such as five-time women’s champion Iga Swiatek’s case, in which she was banned for a month after proving that her melatonin, a sleep medication, was contaminated with a banned substance. In the weeks leading up to the case resolution agreement between Sinner and WADA, it had reiterated publicly that one year was the minimum. When the agreement was done, WADA rationalized it using the proportionality against that it had previously pushed back.
“This was a paradigm case,” said James Fitzgerald, the chief spokesperson for WADA. “It would have been very harsh for the athlete to be sanctioned for a year or more for the level of fault.”
There could be more cases like Sinner’s before too long. WADA is drafting changes to its code that would allow for lesser penalties in similar instances of unintentional doping. In addition, after using its special powers to reach a settlement outside the proscribed sentences in such a high-profile case, more athletes who claim to have doped unintentionally are likely to ask for the same treatment Sinner received.
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Jannik Sinner’s doping case explained: What three-month ban, WADA settlement mean for tennis
For decades, nearly every athlete found to have been at some level of fault for an unintentional anti-doping rule violation was looking at a minimum of a one-year suspension. Only the intervention of CAS could prevent that, which required an athlete to appeal against a penalty from either WADA, which oversees doping cases across sports, or from the organizations that oversee anti-doping in individual sports. In tennis, that is the ITIA; as an Olympic sport, it must align its anti-doping rules with WADA, with room for “a small amount of discretion,” as ITIA chief executive Karen Moorhouse told Andy Roddick’s Served podcast.
Jannik Sinner won this year’s Australian Open before the announcement of his three-month ban. (Yuichi Yamazaki / AFP via Getty Images)
Under the proposed changes, sanctions would be much reduced at first principle, rather than through the resolution agreement mechanism used in Sinner’s case. In place since 2021, what Fitzgerald called a “fail-safe” method allows WADA to take into account specific circumstances. Ross Wenzel, the agency’s general counsel, told the BBC this week that the organization has done this roughly 70 times since 2021.
That explanation was both baffling and music to the ears of defense attorneys who have represented athletes with positive doping tests. Even anti-doping officials at the regional and national levels were stunned.
“We argue proportionality at the Court of Arbitration for Sport all the time,” said Howard Jacobs, one of the leading defenders of athletes who run afoul of doping regulations. “They argue proportionality is not a consideration. They say proportionality is already baked into the code. I say it is not true, and they say it is true.”
Fitzgerald said the case resolution agreement has allowed for proportionality where deemed appropriate, but cases that have resulted in penalties outside the parameters of the WADA code are rare. For example, in 2021, a Canadian ice hockey player accepted a three-month ban for using insulin — taken for health reasons — without seeking a therapeutic use exemption (TUE).
Sinner tested positive for clostebol on two occasions: in competition at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells on March 10 last year, and out of competition eight days later. He was provisionally suspended but quickly and successfully appealed those suspensions, meaning they were not made public. In August, an independent tribunal convened by the ITIA stripped Sinner of the ranking points and prize money he won at Indian Wells but found that he bore “no fault or negligence” for the two anti-doping rule violations and so did not suspend him. The majority of the tribunal did not know Sinner was the player in question when reviewing the case.
It accepted the explanation that his trainer, Umberto Ferrara, had brought an over-the-counter healing spray available in Italy containing clostebol to Indian Wells. His physiotherapist, Giacomo Naldi, cut his hand, and then used the spray on that cut. Naldi then conducted massages on Sinner, which led to contamination with the clostebol from the healing spray.
Sinner’s legal counsel, Jamie Singer of Onside Law, said Saturday: “It is clear that Jannik had no intent, no knowledge, and gained no competitive advantage. Regrettably, errors made by members of his team led to this situation.”
Sinner parted company with Naldi and Ferrara after the ITIA’s announcement. Ferrara has gone on to work with Matteo Berrettini, Sinner’s compatriot and 2021 Wimbledon finalist.
WADA appealed the tribunal’s first-instance decision to CAS in September. “The finding of ‘no fault or negligence’ was not correct under the applicable rules,” WADA said in a statement. “WADA is seeking a period of ineligibility of between one and two years.” It did not seek further disqualification of Sinner’s results, in an implicit gesture at what it would later make explicit — it did not dispute the ITIA tribunal’s conclusion that Sinner had not intentionally doped.
Then, just four months after insisting that Sinner should receive a penalty between 12 and 24 months, it switched gears and settled for three.
Fitzgerald said WADA had to file the appeal to uphold the strict liability principle in its code, under which athletes are responsible for the behavior of the team that they employ.
“Athletes bear responsibility for the negligence of the entourage,” he said. “That’s not to say every case can be treated the same.” WADA officials have defended the settlement as appropriate and the three-month penalty as proportionate to Sinner’s level of culpability.
Jannik Sinner with Giacomo Naldi (left of Sinner) and Umberto Ferrara (right of Sinner) after winning the 2024 Australian Open. (Andy Cheung / Getty Images)
For Jacobs, this goes against his experience of case resolution agreements, in which the outcome has always been within the parameters of the WADA code’s prescribed penalties. As the Sinner case has made clear, no two doping cases are the same and comparing judgements made on discrete sets of facts and evidence is a limited exercise.
“WADA cut a smelly deal, using a little-known backdoor provision,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Tygart is a longtime critic of WADA and has been seeking a major overhaul of it.
“It was either a half-baked decision by WADA to appeal seeking one-to-two years, or it was the right decision to appeal, and they buckled to public pressure. Either way, this never should have happened as it did.”
In response, Fitzgerald accused Tygart of attacking WADA because of his long-running battles with the organization.
“Mr. Tygart should spend more time fixing the significant problems within U.S. anti-doping rather than trying to pick holes where they don’t exist in cases that have nothing to do with him, especially cases like this where he knows a fair outcome has been reached under the rules.
“Regardless of the outcome of this case, one suspects Mr. Tygart would have found an excuse to criticize WADA. We have determined that it is futile to argue with somebody unwilling to accept clear evidence, and whose only goal is to damage WADA and the global anti-doping system.”
GO DEEPER
Jannik Sinner’s case again inflames the resentment at the heart of a two-tiered sport
In a statement after the settlement announcement, Sinner said: “I have always accepted that I am responsible for my team and realize WADA’s strict rules are an important protection for the sport I love. On that basis, I have accepted WADA’s offer to resolve these proceedings on the basis of a three-month sanction.”
Thursday, Feb. 20, organizers of an exhibition event in Las Vegas scheduled for early March announced that Casper Ruud would replace Sinner in the lineup. Sinner could have played in the tournament and collected a hefty appearance fee, since the sport’s ruling bodies don’t sanction the event, but that would have been considered poor form. Throughout his case, players have expressed misgivings in a range of guises and severity, illustrating how a sport following its protocols can mean very little if the people those protocols govern don’t trust their implementation — or don’t fully understand how they work.
Speaking at a news conference in Doha last week where he played in Qatar’s ExxonMobil Open, Novak Djokovic reiterated the main theme: players are not satisfied with how Sinner’s case was handled.
“Many believe there was favoritism,” Djokovic said.
At the Open 13 in Marseille, France, last weekend, Daniil Medvedev — who Sinner beat to win the Australian Open in 2024 — said: “I hope that the next time, the players are going to be able to do that — ‘speak to WADA.’
“I hope that this is going to create a precedent by which everyone will have the opportunity to better defend themselves.”
The Professional Tennis Players Association said the case-by-case discretion was a “cover for tailored deals, unfair treatment and inconsistent rulings.” The statement went on to say, “This bias is unacceptable.”
WADA refutes any suggestion of favoritism, and the proposed reforms to its code would expose more cases to this kind of resolution. Under current regulations, only an anti-doping rule violation linked to a contaminated substance not on its prohibited list is eligible for a reduced punishment, as in Swiatek’s case.
Under the proposed reforms, the language would change from “contaminated product” to “source of contamination.” The “unforeseeable” presence of a banned substance in an athlete’s body, whether from food or via exposure via a third party, would be grounds for just a reprimand or a shorter, proportional ban if successfully proven.
These changes will not mitigate the disparities in outcome linked to how quickly lawyers are mobilized or the quality of a legal defense team, which helped Sinner and Swiatek quickly appeal their provisional suspensions. Athletes will also have to wait — the proposed changes, which national and sporting anti-doping authorities will vote on this fall, would not take effect until 2027.
In the meantime, what happens the next time an athlete asks for proportionality under a case resolution agreement will be closely scrutinized.
“Who will watch and hold accountable the watchdog?’” Tygart asked.
(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Will Tullos /The Athletic)
