Wimbledon has come and gone for 2025. As with every edition, there were thrills and disappointments. After the two week event, Iga Świątek came out as the women's winner after beating Amanda Anisimova in straight sets, 6-0; 6-0 while Jannik Sinner won the men's division as he defeated Carlos Alcaraz, 4-6; 6-4; 6-4; 6-4. While they're celebrating their respective victories, the wider public is in scrutiny because of the winners past transgressions.
The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) and the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) have both determined that Sinner and Świątek didn't intentionally dope but their victories at the All England Club have reopened a debate in tennis and the wider sporting world about their cases.
A tradition once discarded but now an annual convention, the iconic dance between the men’s and women’s singles champions took place at the Wimbledon Ball on Sunday night. Jannik Sinner and Iga Świątek, two natural introverts, smiled and laughed their way through a shake and a twirl at the Raffles London hotel in Whitehall. It was an endearing sight.
Both were well-deserved first-time champions at the All England Club in their respective finals over the weekend. Sinner downed his arch rival and defending champion, Carlos Alcaraz, five weeks on from his French Open heartbreak; while Świątek claimed the first double bagel in a Wimbledon final in 114 years.
Both, inescapably, had an elephant lurking in the corner of the ballroom. Last year, to the shock of the sporting world, Sinner and Świątek failed drug tests. Sinner twice tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid, clostebol, first at the Indian Wells Masters tournament in March 2024 and then in an out-of-competition sample eight days later.
The case was only made public four months later, prior to the US Open, when the ITIA cleared Sinner of any wrongdoing. By February of this year, WADA entered a "case resolution agreement" with Sinner, handing him a three-month suspension. Sinner accepted the offer, keen to avoid a lengthy legal battle.
WADA accepted the cause, which read that Sinner’s physiotherapist, Giacomo Naldi, cut his finger on a scalpel and used a spray, which was, "easily available over the counter in any Italian pharmacy," containing clostebol to treat his finger. Naldi then gives Sinner a daily full-body massage and the Italian player later tested positive.
As for Świątek, the Pole accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the prohibited substance, trimetazidine (TMZ) in August. It's a medication used to treat heart conditions but Świątek was found to have been, "at the lowest end of the range for no significant fault or negligence" by the ITIA. It only became public in November, after the 2024 season concluded.
Świątek explained that the positive test was caused by a contaminated supply of the non-prescription medication, melatonin, which she uses to help with jet lag and sleep issues; provided to her by her physio. The product was contaminated during manufacturing, an investigation concluded, resulting in an extremely low trace of TMZ.
In both cases, the reasoning has been accepted by the authoritative bodies involved. What is less digestible, for fans of the sport and various sections of the locker room, is the notion of preferential treatment for two of tennis’s top players.
No two cases are the same, and conflating cases leads to confusion and misinformation. There are key differences. One is the "no significant fault or negligence" verdict in the Świątek case, compared with the "no fault or negligence" in the initial Sinner verdict. This is why Świątek was given a ban, even though it was short, while Sinner, initially, was not given one at all.
Świątek also provided laboratory analysis and a hair sample to prove that she did not intentionally dope.
Also, WADA’s appeal in Sinner’s case could have led to a one-or two-year suspension. Świątek’s case involved a contaminated medication, while Sinner’s defense was contamination but the product involved had a banned substance as an ingredient. This is why WADA’s appeal — and the subsequent CAS hearing that never happened — could've led to a lengthy ban.
Świątek’s one-month ban covered the Asian swing of tournaments after last year’s US Open. Sinner’s three-month suspension this year took place between the Australian Open in January (which he won) and Roland Garros (the French Open) in May. He was even back a day before his home tournament, the Italian Open.
Neither missed a Grand Slam. As such, it wasn't an uncommon viewpoint that it all looked a little too convenient.
Three-time Grand Slam champion, Stan Wawrinka, stated he, "didn’t believe in a clean sport anymore" after news of Sinner’s three-month ban and the timing of it. World no. 4, Jessica Pegula ,said after Świątek’s suspension that it, "seems so hit or miss with how people get punished." Nick Kyrgios, rather more bluntly, lamented both cases and simply posted an asterisk on X after Sinner’s Wimbledon triumph on Sunday night.
Kyrgios is one of several active players who have criticised the handling of the Italian’s case — he called the initial verdict, "ridiculous" last summer.
Denis Shapovalov and fellow one-time top-10 player, Lucas Pouille, also hit out, with the former posting: “Different rules for different players.”
The frustrations are tied to a perception of other players going through longer processes, with worse outcomes, for superficially similar cases. As with comparing Sinner to Świątek, the comparisons do more harm than good, leading to more confusion and consternation.
By contrast to Sinner and Świątek, British doubles specialist, Tara Moore, was provisionally suspended for 19 months after testing positive for banned substances, boldenone and nandrolone, in 2022. The ITIA, eventually, accepted her testimony that she had eaten contaminated meat while competing in Colombia but only in December 2023, by which point Moore had lost her ranking points and a heap of potential prize money.
"I guess only the top players' images matter," Moore wrote on X last summer, after Sinner’s case became public. "I guess only the independent tribunal’s opinion on the top players is taken as sound and right. Yet, they question them in my case. Just makes no sense."
In February this year, 24-time Grand Slam champion, Novak Djokovic, said in a news conference following Sinner’s ban: "It’s not a good image for our sport." He added: "A majority of the players feel like there is favouritism. It appears that you can almost affect the outcome if you are a top player, if you have access to the top lawyers.”
Tim Henman, the former world No. 4 and a member of the All England Club board that runs Wimbledon, told Sky Sports the timing and duration of the ban seemed “a little too convenient” and had left “a pretty sour taste for the sport.” Serena Williams joked in an interview with Time magazine in April that she would have been “in jail” if she had failed a drug test like Sinner. “If I did that, I would have gotten 20 years. Let’s be honest. I would have gotten Grand Slams taken away from me.”
The ITIA strenuously denies any preferential treatment, and the feelings of favoritism are more tied to tennis being a two-tier sport in other ways. Sinner and Świątek can pay for top lawyers and bespoke laboratory testing because they have the resources to do so, which they have earned through their success and the prize money — and sponsorship deals — that come with that success.
As the best players in the world and the biggest attractions at tournaments, they also get the court allocations they want, the biggest appearance fees, and innumerable other favors, including better facilities to train, first dibs on practice courts and so on. Players already frustrated by these discrepancies would look at perceived ones in anti-doping protocols and see even more unfairness.
There is further frustration for some players because of the effort required to avoid being sanctioned. Players have to give their whereabouts every day for testing, and many have said this year about how paranoid they are about missing a test (whereabouts rules dictate a starting ban of two years for three missed tests) or ingesting a banned substance. Australian Open champion Madison Keys talked about being moved to tears by the stress of it. U.S. Open finalist Jessica Pegula said that she knows “there are a lot of girls who don’t sleep,” while Ons Jabeur talked about being “traumatized” by the early morning ring of the doorbell from testers.
It would be far easier to overlook the muddy waters surrounding Sinner and Swiatek in the last year. Both showed exceptional technical and athletic skill in their triumphs on the grass of SW19 in the last fortnight. And both have their integrity intact, after episodes which will no doubt have kept them awake at night. Sinner hinted as such, saying in the media theatre after his win on Sunday: “It has been everything except easy.”
A bigger issue for tennis is the one that all sports face, which is how to catch those who are trying to cheat without there being collateral damage along the way. In December 2025, WADA will confirm or reject proposed changes to its code on which the tennis anti-doping regulations are based. One of the proposed changes covers contamination.
Only anti-doping rule violations linked to a contaminated substance not on its prohibited list are eligible for a reduced punishment. This is what happened in Świątek’s case: her melatonin, which is not on the prohibited list, was contaminated with TMZ, which is. In Sinner’s case, the substance with which he was contaminated was banned at first principle. This is why WADA originally sought a one- to two-year ban, before deciding that “would have been very harsh.”
Under the proposed reforms, the language in the code would change from “contaminated product” to “source of contamination.” The “unforeseeable” presence of a banned substance in an athlete’s body, whether from food or exposure via a third party, would be grounds for just a reprimand or a shorter, proportional ban if successfully proven.
“We’re racking up positives that have nothing to do with intentional cheating,” Travis Tygart, the USADA chief executive, said in a phone interview in May. “It’s hard for people who understand the system and those who live within it to comprehend why we continue to have rules that are behind the science that don’t stop doping, but knowingly punish innocent people.”
Fitzgerald said via email at the same time that: “Anyone who claims there is a straightforward solution to this issue is not being honest. This is a complex and nuanced area of anti-doping in which WADA always strives to strike the right balance for the good of athletes and clean sport.”
At a Sports Resolutions conference in March, Tygart, who was a key figure in exposing the Lance Armstrong doping operation, praised the ITIA for its handling of the Sinner and Świątek cases because of how due process was followed.
Where innocent explanations are more likely, Tygart would like to see cases for trace amounts of certain substances reported initially as atypical findings. The athletes should then be properly investigated but the starting point would be different from the current protocol. At the moment, positive tests involving trace amounts — like those in these two cases — are reported as adverse analytical findings, which, for purposes of strict liability, shifts the burden to the athlete to have to prove their innocence, with a potential four-year ban the starting point for punishment.
As Sinner and Świątek have discovered, a positive test is, in some people’s eyes, a permanent stain on an athlete’s reputation, irrespective of whether it was deemed to have been intentional doping.
There is a genuine undertone of whether they, particularly Sinner, were fortunate to be competing at Wimbledon at all. To call the length of their suspensions and the timing favourable would be an understatement. For the winners of the most prestigious tournament in the world to have been shrouded in such contentious cases, in just the last 12 months, is a damaging and uncomfortable look for tennis.
This topic is highly debatable. There's no right decision. As for me, I tend to lean towards freedom. They served their time and it's time to move on. To be honest, while I was aware of Sinner's ban, I forgot all about it during the tournament. This issue made me remember it. I've got to admit though, that the timing and length is a tad suspicious. I wouldn't say it's favouritism but rather for the audience and spectator numbers. The more popular an athlete is, the more people will want to see them play. More viewings means more money will be generated.