Fresh claims come to light in Simona HALEP doping scandal surrounding concentration of Roxudustat in positive sample

While Simona Halep returned to the court last week after her doping ban was reduced from four years to nine months, new claims have since come to light from tennis journalist, David Walsh about the amount of Roxudustat needed to even flag up a positive sample.

The ITIA (International Tennis Integrity Agency) handed Halep a four year ban in September 2023 after she tested positive for the substance during the 2022 US Open. She denied consuming the substance intentionally and maintained innocence with the ruling challenged in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). She managed to get her ban reduced on appeal and was back on the court within a week.

But Walsh has put out an article in The Times with snippets shared by fellow journalist, Jannik Schneider claiming that CAS has overlooked major details regarding the concentration of Roxudustat with a huge amount needed to even flag it up on a sample. Dr Eichner who is president of the Salt Lake City laboratory and an expert in pharmacokinetics based his results on two scenarios with the highest level of Roxudustat and the lowest level. For the second, he used the average.

According to the first scenario, the conclusion was that the player would have to ingest more than 50 times the recommended 10g daily serving to produce a positive test. Under the second scenario, it gets blown wider with Eichner stating that Halep would need to ingest 5,000 times the amount to produce the concentration found in her sample which tested positive in August 2022. According to the conclusion made, CAS has ignored the pharmacokinetics or did not understand them and Walsh who titled his article Why return of Simona Halep gives me little confidence in fight against doping, he shares this as the reason why.

"To be fair this is an easy mistake to make. When I take my multivitamin tablet in the morning I sometimes accidentally take 4,999 more. Could happen to anyone," one tennis fan wrote in response to the tweet by Schneider.

"Completely agree, I was hoping Halep would be cleared using evidence, but zero evidence was presented. CAS used “balance of probability” as the main reason to reduce the sentence, that is very ambiguous, it means they are not 100% sure that she did it on purpose just that," another wrote.

"That may be described as: she's not a nobody she's Halep a nobody would get a lifetime ban," another concluded.