Simona Halep Hits Out At Rivals Over Refusal to Reinstate Her Rankings
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Simona Halep voiced her displeasure with the WTA Players' Council for not helping in her attempts to regain her old ranking from before she tested positive for a banned substance.
There has been renewed interest in Halep's doping case since Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek tested positive for banned substances this year, with some feeling the Romanian was mistreated by comparison.
Halep received a provisional suspension after testing positive for the banned substance roxadustat. She could not immediately find the source of contamination, meaning the 2019 Wimbledon champion had her provisional ban made public.
On September 12th, 2023, the International Tennis Integrity Agency suspended Halep for four years. The body's report, published to justify the decision, noted inconsistencies in her biological passport.
However, on March 5th, 2024, upon appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced the ban to nine months, feeling the positive test was a result of contamination from a supplement.
Sinner tested positive for clostebol at March's Indian Wells Open. The International Tennis Integrity Agency's private five-month investigation into his case cleared him of any wrongdoing after accepting his explanation of how the contamination occurred.
This year's Australian Open and US Open champion hoped the case could be put behind him, but that ambition ended when the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. A ruling will be made sometime in 2025.
Swiatek accepted a one-month ban after testing positive for trimetazidine. She received a provisional suspension on September 12th but had it overturned after proving the positive test came from melatonin, a legal substance, being contaminated.
Sinner and Swiatek's cases were kept private while the investigation occurred because both successfully acted within ten days to prove the source of contamination, something Halep could not do.
Nonetheless, Halep feels aggrieved that her case was made public and took so much longer to resolve. The 33-year-old would not even use Swiatek's name in a recent interview because she is so angry.
It has now been revealed that Halep is not just angry at those involved in the anti-doping process. On Instagram, the Romanian shared a post from an account claiming she tried to regain her old ranking, but the WTA Players' Council was not supportive.
"So apparently Simona tried to get help from the WTA Players' Council about getting her ranking back and they denied her. Easy to see when you see who the Players Council' is."
The post also included a list of the players on the Council: Victoria Azarenka, Jessica Pegula, Madison Keys, Donna Vekic, Daria Saville, Gabriela Dabrowski, and Alex Krunic.
The post did not make clear what it meant when stating that the lack of support is not surprising because of who is on the Council. However, it is the topic that Halep spoke about in a recent interview with The Telegraph, sharing her disappointment over the refusal to reinstate her ranking.
"After I was released, and I had only a nine-month ban, I asked for the ranking because now I realise how difficult it is to wait for a wild card. You have to think: ‘How should I practise? How should I prepare?’ So all this is really tiring."
"I understood the player council didn’t want to give me the ranking that I had last July, and also WTA didn’t agree. So this was very disappointing, because I really feel and I really believe that I deserve to get it back."
