Simona Halep learned of her punishment in the doping scandal after she was heard by the Sport Resolutions tribunal at the end of June. The Romanian received a 4-year ban after testing positive for Roxadustat at the 2022 US Open.

The only avenue of appeal left to the former WTA leader is the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.

If the disqualification given on Tuesday remains, it will be possible to talk about the end of her career (Khalep will turn 32 on September 27).

The independent Sport Resolutions tribunal said it had received approximately 8,000 pages of scientific material from the player and the ITIA.

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How the ITIA justifies Simona Halep’s 4-year ban

“The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) can confirm that an independent tribunal has suspended Romanian tennis player Simona Halep for four years for violating the Tennis Anti-Doping Program (TADP).

Halep, 31, a two-time Grand Slam champion, was charged with two separate TADP violations. The first involved an Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF) for the banned substance roxadustat at the 2022 US Open through routine in-competition urine tests. The second charge related to violations in Halep’s Athlete Biological Passport (ABP).

The independent tribunal, set up by Sport Resolutions, met on 28 and 29 June 2023 in London and heard from scientific experts on behalf of Halep and the ITIA, with the player also giving evidence directly to the panel during the proceedings.

On 11 September 2023, the tribunal confirmed that it had found the player to have committed an intentional anti-doping rule violation under Article 2 of the TADP: the presence and use of roxadustat as confirmed in Halep’s urine sample collected on 29 August 2022 in the US OPEN. Use of a prohibited substance or method during 2022 based on the collection and analysis of 51 blood samples provided by players under the ABP program.

The tribunal accepted Halep’s argument that she had taken a contaminated supplement, but ruled that the amount ingested by the player could not have resulted in the concentration of roxadustat found in the positive sample.

ABP’s charge was also upheld, with the tribunal saying it had no reason to doubt the unanimous “strong opinion” reached by each of three independent experts from the Athletes’ Passport Management Unit (APMU) that “alleged doping” was the explanation for the irregularities in Halep’s profile .

Halep was provisionally suspended from October 2022, a termination which the tribunal decided on from the period of disqualification. Thus, the suspension of the former number one racket of the world will last from October 7, 2022 to October 6, 2026. The case remains the subject of an appeal,” the message reads. ITIAquoted by Eurosport.

• What is roxadustat, the substance that earned Simona Halep a four-year ban

Know:

• The news that Simona Halep was temporarily suspended for doping appeared on Friday, October 21, 2022.

• Simona Halep is temporarily suspended from tennis due to a positive test for Roxadustat (conducted during the US Open 2022).

• Simona’s case was heard by Sport Resolutions, an independent tribunal in London that hears doping cases in white sport.

• Simone has one more appeal: the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.

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