"Practically, the year 2023 is closed for Simona's return": Romanian pundit believes Halep's chances of imminent return are over

According to Romanian tennis pundit Cristian Tudor Popescu, Simona Halep has virtually no chance of returning to top tennis following the latest allegations against her.

Simona Halep was provisionally banned from tennis following a positive doping test last year at the US Open. Recently she got hit with another doping violation due to some irregularities in her biological passport which complicated an already complicated situation even more. Her hearing was then postponed which prompted Halep to accuse the ITIA of very unfair treatment from the start.

Fellow Romanian Popescu doesn't see her returning to tennis this year and doesn't seem optimistic about any return in the future either. He wrote on Facebook:

"The chances of Simona returning to high-level tennis tend to zero. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announces that Simona Halep must face a new allegation, separate from that related to Roxadustat, related to "irregularities" in her Biological Passport, an archive of tests and measurements that players from the first 300 places in the WTA ranking have. For now, I don't know what these "irregularities" consist of, but the emerging perspective,."

He added:

"Anyway, Simona was on a knife edge with the May 28 deadline for the Roxadustat case. Had she then received a favorable verdict and had her suspension lifted, she would have had a chance to play at Wimbledon, without much expectation, but at least to return to high-level tennis. Thus, with the two cumulative charges, the probability of lifting the suspension tends to be zero. Practically, the year 2023 is closed for Simona's return. I still believe in the good faith of Simona Halep, but her future in tennis sounds bleak."