Simona Halep has reportedly started the appeal process after being slapped with a four-year ban from tennis last month. An independent tribunal found that the two-time Grand Slam champion committed “intentional” Anti-Doping Rule Violations after she was charged with two separate breaches of the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme (TADP). Halep was said to be in tears when she learned of her lengthy suspension from the sport as she continues to deny ever having doped.
Halep tested positive for the banned substance roxadustat in August 2022 and was subsequently provisionally suspended in October of last year. The 2019 Wimbledon winner was later charged with irregularities in her Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) and last month, it was announced that Halep had been suspended for four years.
An independent tribunal found that the former world No 1 had committed “intentional Anti-Doping Rule Violations” in relation to the two charges. According to The Athletic, Halep was left in tears when the tribunal’s decision was announced.
The Romanian drove home to Bucharest “to be with her family on the September day the decision came out”. It was also said to be “an emotional day, filled with tears and an inability to understand how she could have been found guilty of blood doping even though illegal substances were never found in her blood.”
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In a statement released on the day the decision was announced, Halep shared her intentions to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The 2019 Wimbledon champion has now filed her notice appeal. The International Tennis Integrity Agency – which brought the two charges – now has around a month to respond and the court will then set a hearing date, per The Athletic.
If Halep is successful, CAS has the power to reduce her ban. It is currently backdated to when she was first provisionally suspended last year and is set to be lifted on October 6, 2026. The 32-year-old has continued to maintain her innocence on both charges.
In Halep’s statement from last month, she claimed that the positive test for roxadustat was the result of contamination from a collagen supplement she had taken. Halep also said her representatives had raised “multiple legitimate questions regarding the conclusions reached around my Athlete Biological Passport testing.”
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It came after three experts ruled that changes in her blood parameters were the result of “likely doping” following a blood test on September 22, 2022 which was deemed “suspicious”. Halep herself claimed that two of the three experts changed their opinion only after learning her identity and said: “The ITIA relied solely on the opinions of these experts who looked only at my blood parameters – which I’ve maintained for more than 10 years in the same range.”
While the independent tribunal accepted Halep’s claim of contamination from the supplement, they ruled that the volume of roxadustat that she ingested could not have been from contamination alone.
The tribunal also stated that they had tribunal no reason to doubt the unanimous “strong opinion” reached by three independent Athlete Passport Management Unit experts that “likely doping” was the explanation for the irregularities in Halep’s profile.
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