With the sudden retirement of two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep, tennis lost another legend of the sport.
The former world No.1 bowed out with a whimper rather than a bang at the Transylvania Open in Romania last week, meekly succumbing to Italy’s Lucia Bronzetti 6-1 6-1.
While the 33-year-old cited ongoing injuries as the main reason behind her decision to hang up the racquet, it’s hard not to think the 2022 doping suspension was the nail in the coffin.
Addressing the ban in a lengthy interview with Romanian media outlet 30-0 shortly after the match, Halep didn’t mince her words.
When asked what she thought was her defining quality, Halep mentioned "faith" before adding a rather damning statement.
"Until the suspension incident happened to me, I didn't believe in evil; that's when I realised there is a lot of evil in the world," she said in Romanian.
Dramatic, yes, but she did follow up by saying she is "at peace" with herself in the knowledge that she did nothing wrong and is "in a good place".
Let’s take a step back.
In early 2022, Halep was already considering retirement, stating that she didn’t feel she had enough power to return inside the top-10, of which she had dropped out the previous year. Splitting with long-time coach Darren Cahill, it was Patrick Mouratoglou who convinced her to stay on tour.
After relatively poor results (for Halep’s lofty standards) at Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros, Mouratoglou took full responsibility, posting an apology message on Instagram to her fans (to a mixed reaction).
While her results picked up shortly after, reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals and winning her 24th and final title at the Canadian Open, Halep dropped off again, culminating in a shock first-round loss to qualifier Daria Snigur at the US Open.
Then came the news that would rock her world: Halep tested positive for the banned substance, roxadustat, on two separate charges.
One was for an Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF) for roxadustat, and the other was due to irregularities in her Athlete Biological Passport (ABP).
A drawn-out hearing process followed, and after she was initially banned for four years by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), she successfully appealed that decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which reduced her ban to nine months.
The CAS agreed that Halep’s positive test was likely caused by contamination of a supplement she had been using. Although she did bear some level of fault or negligence for using the supplement, it did not rise to the level to justify a multi-year ban.
A full read of the CAS verdict reveals the inconsistent approach by the ITIA in the original accusation towards Halep.
For a start, the ITIA tests were qualitative, not quantitative, and the results can differ drastically depending on which method you use. Halep's team asked the ITIA to use other methods to measure, but they refused. The CAS concluded that this method was unreliable.
To this day, it’s unclear how much roxadustat was actually in Halep's system. What we do know is that the amount is likely a lot lower than what the ITIA claimed.
Seeking a second opinion, Halep went to professor Jean-Claude Alvarez, the director of the toxicology laboratory at the CHU de Garches.
Analysis by Alvarez showed she could not have had the amount of roxadustat in her system, which the ITIA accused her of having. In fact, Alvarez determined that Halep had 10 times lower quantities than a patient who actually took that substance.
The ITIA had no evidence to rebut this because they didn't do quantitative analysis themselves.
While refuting Halep's ban for testing positive for roxadustat, Alvarez also found it hard to understand how irregularities were found in the former Wimbledon champion’s biological passport.
"Six months on, they’re saying that her September sample is 'lightly doping' (slightly positive) when that wasn’t the case six months before," he said.
"It was when they knew she had taken roxadustat in her analyses that the experts changed their interpretation. I just can’t understand it."
The CAS verdict highlights some potentially careless mistakes by the ITIA, as well as an unscientific and unreliable approach to measuring the amount of roxadustat in her system.
These key facts summarise why the CAS reduced Halep's punishment to nine months.
Following her suspension, several parties came out in support of Halep.
The Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), run by Novak Djokovic, continued to defend Halep and called the handling of her situation a "disgrace", while Alvarez has said, "We’re condemning an innocent woman. We’re making a mistake."
So what is the truth?
The fact of the matter is, Halep did test positive for a banned substance, even if it was through accidental contamination. While Halep has always maintained her innocence, she does bear some level of responsibility for what goes into her body.
Is she guilty of doping? Yes. But, as with any doping case, there is far more to it than meets the eye, as evidenced by reading the CAS findings (which most people won’t read).
Some may argue that Halep could be spinning a false narrative in the hope that if you say it enough times, people will believe it. There may be an element of this, no one wants to admit they are guilty.
However, while there are other factors, including a pile-up of injuries and her association with Mouratoglou, it’s hard to ignore the inconsistencies in the ITIA’s methods and process surrounding her doping suspension.
Sure, the ITIA is not entirely to blame and not the sole reason for Halep’s rapid decline in form.
What is clear, however, is that when she returned to competitive tennis on March 7 2024 at the Miami Open, Halep was never the same player she once was.
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