Reactions to tennis player Simona Halep’s ban poured in. There was sadness, outrage and farewells from colleagues. Including Serena Williams’s confusing X line.
Seven-time Wimbledon singles champion Serena Williams wrote on X, “8 is a better number” when the decision to ban Simona Halep was made.
Later, she was also found to have abnormalities in the athlete’s biological passport after 51 blood samples were analyzed.
Roxadustat is a substance used legally to treat anemia, but is on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list because it is considered a doping agent that increases hemoglobin and red blood cell production.
According to the latest information from the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), former world No. 1 tennis player Simona Halep was banned from competition for 4 years for two intentional violations of anti-doping rules. Halep announced that she would appeal the penalty and take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
This is considered the heaviest ban decision in tennis since the case of Maria Sharapova. The famous former Russian tennis player was banned from competition for 15 months after testing positive for meldonium.
At that time, Sharapova received a lot of support from fans and colleagues when she used meldonium without knowing it was banned. Serena Williams also sided with her arch-rival and supported it when Sharapova called the two-year ban “extremely harsh”.
After Sharapova appealed, her initial two-year ban was reduced to 15 months.
In Halep’s case, the verdict was even harsher. However, there was not much support for her before this ban.