Patrick
Mouratoglou admitted responsibility for
Simona Halep's doping that led to her
4-year suspension from the tennis circuit.
The former
world No. 1 has been away from competition for the past year due to a
suspension she received after testing positive for Roxadustat at the 2022 US
Open, following her first-round defeat to Daría Snigur.
Her coach
in 2022,
Patrick Mouratoglou, recently posted a video on social media where he
took responsibility for himself and his team in administering collagen to
Simona Halep. It was this collagen that was found to be contaminated and
resulted in the positive doping tests in both urine and blood.
“We have
been able to establish where the contamination comes from. So we proposed her
to take collagen and we brought her collagen from a company. This collagen
happened to be contaminated, there was no way to know it. But I feel
responsible for what happened because it's my team. So it's me basically who
brought her this collagen.”
The French coach, former coach of Serena Williams, faced widespread criticism on social media:
“What a
coward he is! Took him so long when we all knew in fact, from the beginning,
that his team was responsible. If he would have come out from the beginning
then all Simona’s haters would have kept their mouth shut! Also, Simona
divorced her recently married husband soon after she started working with
Mouratoglou. Just another coincidence!"
“When are
we going to admit
@pmouratoglou is a fraud?”
“Knew it
from the beginning, so sorry for Simona. She was punished for daring to win
that Wimbledon against Serina.”
“Wow..so he
is the one who bought the supplements from this company, Simona is suing the
company I believe. And Patricia why are you only coming out now? I don't trust
Patrick at all, sniff sniff. Simona should have never employed him as a coach.”
Here are
some other fan reactions: