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International Tennis Federation to change anti-doping procedures to stop the 'silent ban'

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Simon Briggs, tennis correspondent 

25 MAY 2016 • 7:37PM

Tennis is to take a more proactive stance on doping by revealing positive tests as they arise, rather than waiting until the hearing has been held to explain why a certain player has been absent from the tour for several months

The shift in policy, which is to be announced in July, comes as tennis fights to clean up its reputation after a bruising few months. Conspiracy theorists often claim that positive tests are suppressed, sometimes pointing to Andre Agassi’s unpunished use of crystal meth as an example. And these rumours have only been encouraged by more recent cases like that of Marin Cilic, whose withdrawal from Wimbledon in 2013 was initially ascribed to a knee injury, before it later emerged that he had tested positive for a banned stimulant.

“I think we want to become as transparent as possible,” Dave Haggerty, president of the International Tennis Federation, told the Daily Telegraph yesterday. “And that could mean making provisional suspensions known at the time. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement after Wimbledon, because I think there are ways we can take away mystery and supposition and make it more clear what may or may not be going on.”

Haggerty explained that the new policy will have to be ratified by the boards of constituent bodies such as the ATP and WTA tours, which explains why the change cannot be made immediately. But all seven of the big tennis organisations – the two tours, the ITF and the four grand slams – held a so-called “leadership meeting” in Paris on Tuesday, and Haggerty insists that “tennis is united on this”.

The issue of unannounced tests has been raised again in Paris this week because of the case of Varvara Lepchenko, the Uzbek-born American who did not play any tour matches during March or April. In an interview published by in the Russian newspaper Sport Express last week, the physical trainer Anatoly Glebov suggested that a positive test for meldonium lay behind Lepchenko’s absence. She was asked about Glebov’s comments eight times in the Roland Garros interview room on Tuesday and declined to comment.

Tennis is not far from unique in its existing policy of waiting until the hearing – which is usually a couple of months after the test – before releasing information of any action that might be taken against a player. While they wait to hear their fate, players tend not to appear on the tour, so that they can then backdate any resulting ban to their positive test.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2016/05/25/international-tennis-federation-to-change-anti-doping-procedures/

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