ITIA accusations of favoritism towards Sinner and Swiatek unravelled

International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) CEO Karen Moorhouse has opened up about accusation of giving preferrable treatment to Italy’s Jannik Sinner and Poland’s Iga Swiatek. Both players, who are currently regarded as the best in their respective categories, have been involved in a doping scandal in the recent past.

Sinner, who is currently the world number one in men’s tennis in the singles category and finished the year as the best player in the world, having a lead of more than 3,000 rating points in the ATP rankings, failed two doping tests in March earlier this year. However, despite that, the two-time Grand Slam winner narrowly managed to escape any ban after the ITIA accepted the player’s counsel’s response where they claimed that the availability of the banned substance in the player's sample was because of receiving a cream for the treatment of an injury from one member of his coaching staff.

On the other hand, Swiatek also faced a drug test and was handed a one-month ban, which she accepted. Both decisions caused strong reactions from certain quarters of the tennis community, where some famous current and former players accused ITIA of having double standards while dealing with such issues. ITIA’s CEO Moorhouse recently spoke to Tennis 365, and he talked in detail about those verdicts. Moorhouse was of the opinion that neither Sinner nor Swiatek received any special treatment.

“It’s the same rules and the same processes for every player. All cases are different and each case turns on individual facts. Cases can also be quite complex, so it isn’t right to look at two headlines and draw comparisons between two cases as the detail is always the key part. Let’s take Swiatek and Halep. The CAS tribunal found that her (Halep’s) supplement was contaminated. In relation to Swiatek, the contaminated product was a medication. So it was not unreasonable for a player to assume that a regulated medication would contain what it says on the ingredients. Therefore, the level of fault she could accept was at the lowest level as there was very little more she could have done reasonably to mitigate the risk of that product being contaminated. Halep’s contamination was not a medication. It was a collagen supplement and her level of fault was found to be higher. The key point here is it’s rare to find two cases that are the same they will all turn on their particular facts.”