Jannik Sinner Cleared Of Doping Charges, World No. 1 Will Play The US Open

It’s been a weird six months for Jannik Sinner. From the outside, things have been great. He’s a Grand Slam champion, world No. 1, dating a tennis player, dominating more often than not when he plays and at age 23, he’s not even in the prime of his career.

The Italian star, though, has been battling issues, issues in other courts.

Stunning news broke this morning that Sinner, who just won the Cincinnati Masters Tuesday, testing positive not once but twice in March for the banned substance clostebol.

Sinner’s first positive was during the Indian Wells event where he fell in the semifinals to Carlos Alcaraz. His second positive came just before his Miami title run.

Sinner was actually suspended from the tour a few days after his Miami title. Twice! Both suspensions were quickly overturned in private.

After months of investigations and court dates, a tribunal finally accepted Sinner’s claim that the drug appeared in his system via his physio, Giacomo Naldi. The story goes, the physio cut his finger on a scalpel reaching into a bag during Indian Wells. Naldi sought help for cut from the fitness coach Umberto Ferrara who sprayed the cut with an over-the-counter medication called Trofodermin which Ferrara purchased weeks earlier in Bologna.

Naldi kepts using this spray which contained clostebol. No one knew it, though. Once the bandage from the cut came off a few days later, Naldi continued with the treatments on Sinner including massages. The tribunal accepted that such a small trace was likely to have come from the spray which then was transferred to Sinner’s skin during treatment.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced today that they agreed with Sinner.

“The ITIA accepted the player’s explanation as to the source of clostebol found in their sample and that the violation was not intentional.

“The ITIA referred the case to an independent tribunal to consider the specific facts, review any comparable anti-doping decisions, and determine what, if any, fault the player bore and therefore the appropriate outcome.

“A hearing was convened at Sport Resolutions on 15 August 2024, from which the independent tribunal determined a finding of No Fault or Negligence applied in the case, resulting in no period of ineligibility.”

So Sinner got clear on August 15. He, of course, with that saga behind went on to win Cincinnati yesterday and is now the top seed for the US Open which begins Monday.

“I will now put this challenging and deeply unfortunate period behind me,” Sinner said in a statement. “I will continue to do everything I can to ensure I continue to comply with the ITIA’s anti-doping program and I have a team around me that are meticulous in their own compliance.”

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— Jannik Sinner (@janniksin) August 20, 2024

Some players, though, were not pleased.

Different rules for different players

— Denis Shapovalov (@denis_shapo) August 20, 2024

Ridiculous – whether it was accidental or planned. You get tested twice with a banned (steroid) substance… you should be gone for 2 years. Your performance was enhanced. Massage cream…. Yeah nice 🙄 https://t.co/13qR0F9nH2

— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) August 20, 2024