Tennis player Halep announced her intention to appeal the disqualification decision to the CAS

Two-time Romanian Grand Slam winner Simona Halep said he plans to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the disqualification decision for violating anti-doping rules.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced a four-year ban for Halep on Tuesday. The Romanian woman was charged with two separate counts. The first involved a negative drug test result for the banned substance roxadustat at the 2022 US Open. The second charge was related to discrepancies in the athlete’s biological passport indicators.

“I take the rules that govern our sport very seriously and I am proud to have never knowingly consumed any prohibited substances. I did not agree with the decision of a four-year disqualification.

I am forever grateful for the support I have received from family, friends and tennis fans around the world. I continue to train and do everything in my power to clear my name of these false accusations and return to court. “I intend to appeal this decision to the CAS and use all legal remedies against the nutritional supplement company,” the 31-year-old Romanian wrote on social media.

Halep said his team provided the court with compelling evidence in its defense, including many legitimate questions about the findings of the athlete’s biological passport examination.

“While I am grateful to finally have a result after many unnecessary delays and feeling like I have been living in purgatory for over a year, I am both shocked and disappointed by their decision.”

I believe in clean sport, and during nearly two decades in professional tennis, I have undergone 200 blood and urine tests for banned substances – all clean through August 29, 2022. Ahead of the season 2022 on hard, on the advice of my team and my physiotherapist, I adjusted my nutritional supplements. None of the ingredients listed contained banned substances, but it is now known (and the court accepted) that one of them was contaminated with roxadustat. After my first positive test, I was tested almost every week until early 2023, all came back negative.

Despite this evidence, the ITIA only filed a complaint regarding the athlete’s passport after its panel learned of my identity. This caused two of the three experts to suddenly change their minds in favor of the ITIA accusations. The agency relied solely on the opinions of these experts, who only examined my blood parameters. They ignored the fact that no illegal substances were ever found in my blood or urine samples, with the exception of a positive test for roxadustat on August 29, which was present in the sample at one extremely low concentration and, given my negative test three days earlier, could have been caused solely by accidental exposure to roxadustat,” Halep noted.

Halep topped the WTA rankings for 64 weeks. She has won two Grand Slam singles tournaments: the 2018 French Open and 2019 Wimbledon. In total, the Romanian has 24 titles in WTA tournaments.