Jannik Sinner’s doping saga will dominate the Australian Open

Three years ago it was number one in the men’s category and was allegedly on an entry visa, this year it is number one in the men’s category and a controversial doping case.

Welcome to AO 2025, where two questions and controversy will dominate this year’s opening Grand Slam.

Should men’s world number one Jannik Sinner be disqualified for doping?

Has tennis once again harmed itself by promoting a double standard that favors the sport’s stars at the expense of the underdogs?

For years, the sport has had this battle over match-fixing at lower levels and the lack of pay for those who try to keep it at odds with the millions of dollars earned by top stars.

Now the same question, different topic: do top stars receive preferential treatment and have better access to measures to combat doping cases?

ATP doesn’t want you to think that.

ATP president and former Italian professional Andrea Gaudenzi said this week that he does not believe there is a double standard in tennis that resulted in Sinner’s alleged preferential treatment, despite numerous comments from professionals suggesting the contrary and potential evidence to the contrary.

These comments, which have poured in over the past six months, have come from such high places, arguably the highest ever for Novak Djokovic, and are also fueled by a deep wave of discontent, led by returning Australian star Nick Kyrgios.

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It doesn’t matter that Kyrgios – who is coming back from a wrist injury that almost ended his career – has barely played for the past 18 months, but he remains controversial and continues to speak his mind.

He recently said of Sinner, among other things: “If I played him at the Australian Open, I would just get every single person in the audience to fall for him. I would just turn it into an absolute riot.”

Sinner, for his part, does not want to be drawn into a war of words with Kyrgios.

It is also unlikely that Kyrgios will start these “riots”.

The two teams are on opposite ends of the spectrum and would only go into the final, with bookmakers likely to allow punters to set their own odds given both Kyrgios’ injury problems and the outside pressure on Sinner.

No fault or any fault?

However, no matter how Kyrgios scored against Sinner, he may have had one or two dripping with venom.

Sinner is adamant that he did nothing wrong in his doping case and that tennis’s doping body, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), which abides by the rules of global anti-doping body WADA, has cleared him of any wrongdoing in the case.

Sinner, the reigning Australian and US Open champion, tested positive twice in March, claiming it was because his physiotherapist cut his finger and treated it with a spray containing the banned steroid Clostebol, which he received from Sinner’s fitness trainer. It was then transferred percutaneously to Sinner while his physical therapist massaged him.

No one is suggesting that Sinner deliberately took doping.

An independent tribunal appointed by ITIA found that Sinner “was not guilty of any fault or negligence in the matter, which did not result in a sanction of ineligibility.”

The physiotherapist’s account of what happened was consistent with Sinner’s account. Sinner parted ways with both his physiotherapist and coach before the US Open.

Whether you believe Sinner or not, the reality is that trace amounts of Clostebol were detected in his system, and despite the ITIA finding that Sinner was not at fault, WADA is disputing this before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the case is scheduled to be heard on April 16-17 this year.

The DEFECT appears to be that Sinner has committed some error or omission.

“WADA demands a ban of one to two years. WADA does not seek disqualification of any results, except those already imposed by the first-instance tribunal.”

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A WADA spokesman also told the ABC that this was the first time it had learned of its appeal against the ITIA ruling.

The usual sanction for Sinner’s breaches, if it was proven he intended to use drugs, would be a four-year ban. This amount drops to two years when the athlete can prove that he did not use drugs intentionally.

The “absence of fault or negligence” in the Tennis Anti-Doping Code (TADP) governs the possibility of a further reduction of a two-year ban or to zero under Article 10.5 of the TADP.

The TADP requires that a player “does not know or suspect, and cannot reasonably know or suspect, even under the utmost caution, that he has used or been administered a prohibited substance.”

A step above that which could result in a two-year ban for Sinner after a CAS case arises is “no substantial fault or negligence”, which requires the player to “establish that he was at fault or negligent, taking into account the totality of the circumstances and adopting the criteria of lack of fault or negligence, was not relevant to the anti-doping rule violation.”

“No chance”: alleged double standards

Sinner is facing a difficult time now and he knows it. The wait until April will be long and no matter where he goes, a doping cloud will hang over him.

“I would be lying if I said I forgot. It’s something I’ve carried with me for a long time, but it is what it is.”

Clouds will also hang over sports. Sinner has no reason to respond, and Polish star Iga Świątek’s one-month ban for taking contaminated melatonin has given the sport a black eye in 2024.

It’s not looking good for two current and former world number one in doping cases.

But they both got favorable results.

This does not apply to everyone and doping penalties are inconsistent as tennis faces the possibility of a new double standard and, after years of claims, top players, particularly on the men’s team, have been treated leniently by referees.

Two-time Australian Grand Slam doubles champion Max Purcell does not know how long he will be sidelined after being banned for taking more than 100ml of vitamins following treatment.

Its breach does not involve a banned substance, but rather, as Tennis Australia said in a statement, a “prohibited method”.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Players like Świątek and Sinner can certainly afford to get their legal and scientific teams involved right away.

Lower-ranked players cannot.

According to the former head of ASADA, Richard Ings, this should be changed.

“Senior players with resources have the ability to put together a legal and scientific team to fight these cases,” Ings said at 7:30.

“In such cases, every athlete must be provided with the same level of representation.”

Same substance, different evidence, different result

While British doubles player Tara Moore, who is thousands of pounds in debt after fighting to clear her name for eating contaminated meat, is a typical test case, Sinner’s has yet another case in point.

In 2023, the ITIA banned low-ranking Italian Stefano Battaglino, who tested positive for Clostebol in minimal amounts at the 2022 ITF event in Morocco.

Battaglino made a similar argument in the case of Sinner, a massage cream applied transdermally by a tournament physiotherapist.

Ultimately, he lost and stayed banned for four years after submitting an appeal to the ITIA and in CAS.

Unlike Sinner, he had no access to a physiotherapist, and indeed the tournament physiotherapist never responded to his legal team’s request for correspondence.

The ITIA also stated that Clostebol is not available in Morocco and suggested that it was unlikely that a physiotherapist, as Battaglino suggested, would treat another patient and then not wash his hands before treating the player.

The independent tribunal found that Battaglino had failed to prove the source of Clostebol, therefore concluded that the anti-doping rule violations were intentional and received a four-year ban, which was upheld by CAS in September 2024, when it found that Battaglino’s arguments did not meet the standards necessary to repeal or reduce sanctions.

Novak knows that changes are needed

The entire process lasted from July 2022 to September 2024. Sinner’s will take half as long.

Gaudenzi does not believe that the fact that Sinner was number one in the world played a role in this or that ITIA was not at fault.

“I am 100 percent sure that there was no preferential treatment. The process was carried out in accordance with the regulations and in accordance with the rules by ITIA,” he told AAP ahead of the Australian Open.

Not everyone thinks so, and it’s not just lower-tier players, several of whom have spoken out about both Swiatek and Sinner on social media.

Djokovic is the one leading calls for a fairer trial because, according to the Serbian star, the optics are bad.

In August, he said: “As far as I understand, his case was pretty much cleared at the time of the announcement, but I think it’s been five or six months since we broke the news to him and his team. So… I understand the feelings of many gamers who have doubts about whether they are treated the same.

“Many players, without naming any one of them, have had almost the same cases where they did not have the same result and now the question is whether it is a matter of funds, whether the player can afford to pay a significant sum of money to a law firm who would then represent them more effectively his case,” Djokovic said.

He doubled in value in Brisbane in January.

“Some lower-ranked players have been waiting for more than a year for their case to be resolved,” Djokovic said.

“I just question the way the system works and why some players aren’t treated the same as others.

These are honest questions that tennis needs to answer.

After all, if the statistical greatest of all time is concerned about anti-doping policies in sports, maybe those in charge should listen to him.

ABC Sport will be blogging live every day about the Australian Open from Melbourne Park.