OPINION: Tennis has its problems, but let’s not make mountains out of mole hills

Though any sport will be held under scrutiny when top-ranked athletes test positive for prohibited substances, the doping controversies tennis has recently faced are mild compared to what we’ve seen in some other sports.

While other players have tested positive in recent years, the highest profile individuals who have hit the headlines for the wrong reasons are Iga Swiatek and, more recently, Jannik Sinner.

Swiatek, a five-time Grand Slam winner, tested positive for trimetazidine in an out-of-competition test last year, and she later received a one-month suspension.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) showed lenience, accepting that the positive test was caused by the contamination of medication she took to overcome jet lag.

And it was revealed last week that world number one Sinner had tested positive twice last year for the anabolic steroid clostebol, but his reasoning was also accepted, with the ITIA finding that the substance had entered his body when receiving a massage from his physio.

WADA gets involved

While the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) did not appeal the decision in Swiatek’s case, it did appeal the decision to clear Sinner, ultimately agreeing to give him a three-month ban.

If Swiatek and Sinner had been guilty of intentional doping, WADA would have done everything in its power to ensure harsh punishments were dished out.

To be clear, they still deserved bans because it’s important that precedents are set when elite players test positive, but both cases were mild at best and neither player deserved a long-term suspension.

What’s happening in tennis is nothing compared to what we’ve seen happening in cycling, where it was discovered some years ago that the sport was fraught with organised doping, or in athletics where a long list of athletes in various disciplines have been banned for cheating over the last decade.

If tennis players are caught doping, they should be heavily sanctioned, but if there are good reasons for positive test results, we don’t need to make mountains out of mole hills.

As far as doping scandals go, there are other sports which have far bigger problems than tennis.