Iga Swiatek has received overwhelming support from her coach, Wim Fissette, who bluntly accused those criticizing the Pole of not correctly reading the facts of her doping case.
Swiatek needed a new coach in October after splitting with Tomasz Wiktorowski. He had coached the former WTA world No. 1 for nearly three years, helping her to achieve much success.
Winning three French Opens, the 2022 US Open, the 2023 WTA Finals, and ten WTA 1000 titles were among Swiatek's accomplishments during a very successful collaboration with Wiktorowski.
Swiatek hired Fissette shortly afterward. The Belgian split with Naomi Osaka for the second time after the US Open. Fissette helped the Japanese star win the 2020 US Open and 2021 Australian Open in their first spell, but they could not recapture that success in 2024.
Osaka is one of many players Fissette has coached. He was on Kim Clijsters' team during two of her US Open titles and assisted Angelique Kerber in securing the 2018 Wimbledon title.
Swiatek and Fissette's only tournament together so far was at the WTA Finals. She became just the fourth player in the last 20 years not to make the semifinal despite winning two round-robin matches at the season-ending tournament.
A few weeks later, controversy erupted. It was revealed that Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension from the International Tennis Integrity Agency after testing positive for the prohibited substance trimetazidine.
Swiatek received a provisional ban on September 12th but had it lifted 22 days later after successfully appealing when further testing proved that the melatonin tablets she bought became contaminated with trimetazidine.
Many sympathize with Swiatek since all she did was buy a legal product and could not have expected the melatonin to be contaminated. Andy Roddick does not believe what she did should be considered doping.
However, not everyone shares that view. Nick Kyrgios has criticized Swiatek and Jannik Sinner, who also tested positive for a banned substance this season. Eugenie Bouchard publicly agreed with Kyrgios.
Fissette did not hold back when speaking to the Polish news agency Przeglad Sportowy Onet. He said Swiatek was unlucky and doubted whether those criticizing her had read the case details.
"There will always be people who will be negative, but I think that anyone who has read all the documents that Iga has provided and shown to the whole world, sees what happened. And should understand that it was just bad luck. It can happen to any player."
"I think that those people who are negative about the case, we should ask a few questions about Iga's report and thus check whether they have actually read it."
Swiatek receiving support from her coach is not unsurprising. At the same time, the details of what happened to the former US Open champion prove she did not mean to dope, regardless of whether one thinks the one-month ban was harsh or too lenient.
The World Anti-Doping Agency could still appeal the case, as it did in Sinner's case. The Court of Arbitration for Sport will reach a verdict in the Italian case sometime in 2025, but not before February 11th.