"The game is rigged": Billionaire ex-player accuses WADA of 'cheating the sport' after agreement with Jannik Sinner

Former Romanian tennis player Ion Tiriac has become the latest name to criticise the deal between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Italy’s Jannik Sinner. Both the doping agency as well as the world number one have come under serious criticism after they both reached an agreement which will see the three-time Grand Slam winner stay out of action for three months.

Sinner tested positive for the banned substance clostebol in two doping tests in March last year but miraculously managed to escape any ban. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) declared him innocent following a detailed hearing where his counsel claimed that the substance was available in the player’s sample because one member of the coaching staff had received a cream for the treatment of an injury.

Things turned ugly for the world number one in October last year when it was announced that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed against the ITIA’s verdict in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and demanded a two-year ban for the three-time Grand Slam winner. However, the issue finally came to a conclusion on Saturday as WADA announced that they had reached an agreement with Sinner, which will result in the player remaining out of action for three months.

“The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirms that it has entered into a case resolution agreement in the case of Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner, with the player accepting a three-month period of ineligibility for an anti-doping rule violation that led to him testing positive for clostebol, a prohibited substance, in March 2024,” the statement said.

Former Romanian player Tiriac, who also served as the head of the Romanian Olympic Committee and played a key role in the creation of WADA, has lambasted the doping agency. The 85-year-old wrote an article for French publication L'Equipe where he stated that WADA is ‘cheating the sport’.

"The day WADA accepted the first so-called "TUE" exception for an athlete to take substances from the blacklist, that's when cheating was completely legalized,” he wrote. “The system collapsed. There are thousands of athletes, and probably hundreds in my sport, tennis, who have up to 14 or 15 exceptions and who still haven't tested positive. This is cheating the sport, cheating yourself, cheating your fellow competitors and cheating the public. The game is rigged, my friends, and rigged deep down."