It is difficult to know if players are hiding something and looking to cheat.
Asenathi Ntlabakanye is serving an 18-month ban. Picture: Daniel Hlongwane/Gallo Images
The year’s most famous tennis Grand Slam, Wimbledon, gets underway in London on Monday with a dark cloud hanging over the tournament.
Not only are some players unhappy with the prize money, but the banning last week of former women’s champion Marketa Vondrousova, for failing to take a drugs test, has left many players unhappy.
According to reports, Vondrousova declined a test one night when anti-doping officials arrived at her home late and she feared for her safety due to anxiety. She was subsequently banned for four years.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of drug testing and how tribunals and panels get to the length of bans, but it just doesn’t seem right that one is banned for such a lengthy period for not taking a test.
Vondrousova has stated she has never taken a performance-enhancing drug.
Who does one believe? Is it fair?
Other suspensions
Jannik Sinner was banned for only three months after testing positive for the banned anabolic steroid clostebol. He successfully claimed the drug entered his system inadvertently.
Iga Swiatek served only a one-month ban in late 2024 after testing positive for trimetazidine, also a prohibited substance. She said the positive test resulted from taking a contaminated, over-the-counter melatonin supplement.
In South Africa recently, rugby player Asenathi Ntlabakanye was handed an 18-month ban after testing positive for the non-specified hormone Anastrozole and self-declared the use of DHEA (a prohibited anabolic steroid). He said the medicine he took, which contained these banned substances, was cleared by the Lions’ team doctor.
And in Sunday’s Rapport, former Stormers rugby player David Britz claims he, too, received a ban, which ruined his career, after using medicine that had been prescribed to him by a team doctor.
There are fine margins in drug use in sport. And, of course, it’s difficult to know who uses banned substances out of choice and who might ingest them inadvertently. Some are performance-enhancing, some are not.
Sometimes it feels as if hearings into cases and subsequent findings are too set in stone and individual cases are not treated on their own specific merits, with their own intricacies.
What should ultimately only matter is that the cheats be found out and banned. And it doesn’t always seem this is the case.
