Tennis drug testers have lost all credibility over Jannik Sinner silence

Italian’s absolution raises question of whether there is one rule for sport’s superstars and another for rank-and-file players

When the men’s world No 1 is cleared of any fault or negligence in a doping investigation, you might expect his peers to circle the wagons in solidarity. And yet the dominant reaction in tennis to Jannik Sinner’s absolution, five months after the Italian returned two adverse analytical findings for the prohibited steroid clostebol, is pure, unadulterated rage.
“Can’t imagine what every other player who got banned for contaminated substances is feeling right now,” said Canada’s Denis Shapovalov. “Maybe they should stop taking us for fools, no?” wondered Lucas Pouille, of France. “What about players who got banned for three no-shows only and never tested positive?” It fell to Nick Kyrgios, naturally, to apply the hobnail boot, arguing that Sinner should have been thrown out of the game for two years, while treating the explanation of inadvertent contamination via a masseur – a version of events that an independent tribunal accepted in full – with sarcastic disdain. “Massage cream,” wrote the Australian, with an eye-roll emoji. “Yeah nice.”
While Kyrgios’s wanton provocations can grate, there are legitimate reasons to treat the manner of Sinner’s exoneration with disbelief. It has only just been disclosed, for example, that Sinner had to forfeit the £245,000 he earned for reaching the semi-finals in March at Indian Wells, the self-declared “fifth slam” where his two positive samples were recorded. Or that he had to give up the 400 world ranking points he accrued that week. Or that he was twice provisionally suspended in April without anybody being any the wiser.
It is an article of faith in these cases that athletes are responsible for whatever rogue elements enter their bodies, in however tiny the concentrations. Sinner’s legal team were able to navigate around this by arguing that the player had no idea that his fitness expert had bought a product containing clostebol, which had been used to treat a cut on his physiotherapist’s finger. And so on the basis of what the tribunal accepted was an accidental transfer of the substance, the Australian Open champion was able to continue his career in peace, buttressing his position at the summit of the rankings without any murmur about the inquiry he was facing.
Contrast this with what happens further down the tennis food chain. Tara Moore has been defined, unlike Sinner, by modest glories, with her professional high point a first-round Wimbledon win in 2016. Six years later, the Briton’s world fell apart, when she tested positive for banned steroids boldenone and nandrolone at a tournament in Bogota. The International Tennis Integrity Unit eventually cleared her – agreeing with her claim that she had merely eaten the meat of steroid-dosed cattle – but not before the ordeal of being wrongly smeared as a doper ruined all that she had built.
“Nineteen months of my reputation, my livelihood, slowly trickling away,” Moore despaired. “Nineteen months of emotional distress. It’s going to take more than 19 months to rebuild, repair and recuperate from what we’ve been through.” It is this glaring disparity, between the burgeoning superstar who is allowed to keep everything quiet and the member of the rank-and-file who is fed to the wolves, that lies behind much of the simmering resentment among Sinner’s colleagues.
“This is not right,” said Britain’s Liam Broady. “Plenty of players go through the same thing and have to wait for months or years for their innocence to be declared. Not a good look.”
The broad headline is that Sinner has not sinned in any way. The portrayal by his lawyer is of a poor unfortunate ensnared by the merciless strictness of tennis’s anti-doping system. Quite whether his fellow players buy into this depiction is a moot point. Several would have loved for the details of a positive test to be suppressed until a no-fault ruling was established. So has Sinner, courtesy of his access to the best legal representation, been the recipient of preferential treatment? And how can the process be so opaque as to bury his test results but not those of his lowlier brethren? The longer these questions go unanswered, the more the game’s image suffers. “Different rules for different players,” raged Shapovalov.
It did little to soothe tensions that the ATP Tour promptly released a statement expressing sympathy for Sinner, pitying the “challenging situation” he had gone through. Not half as challenging, mind, as one endured by Moore, who cried on her Wimbledon return this summer about all the time she had lost trying to clear her name. The fact that Sinner has enjoyed a far less rocky path to the same outcome only sharpens an impression of tennis as the ultimate two-tier sport.