The top court in global sport is hearing for a second day former Wimbledon and French Open champion Simona Halep’s appeal against a four-year doping suspension which could end her career.
The former No. 1 arrived at the Court of Arbitration for Sport Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Wednesday in Lausanne for three-day proceedings that she hopes will see her provisional suspension lifted. She spent 10 hours at the hearings.
The court will hear her coach Patrick Mouratoglou and physiotherapist Candice Gohier on Thursday.
Halep, 32, has been provisionally suspended since October 2022 after testing positive at the U.S. Open for roxadustat, a banned anti-anemic drug. Mouratoglou admits having given her a supplement that contained roxadustat.
Tennis anti-doping officials also charged Halep with another doping offense last year due to irregularities in her athlete biological passport a method designed to monitor different blood parameters over time to reveal potential doping.
Halep has strenuously denied the charges and blamed contaminated licensed supplements for her positive test at the U.S. Open. She has accused the International Tennis Integrity Agency of charging her with an ABP violation after the group of experts who assessed her profile learned her identity.
An independent tribunal accepted Halep’s argument that she had taken a contaminated supplement but determined the volume she ingested could not have resulted in the concentration of roxadustat found in her positive sample.
Halep said she would not make any statement until the proceedings ends.
She told Euronews in December that if the court dismisses her appeal, she could be compelled to retire. „It’s catastrophic if it’s going to be four years,” she said. “I don’t know how I will handle it. Probably it will be the end of my career.”
Simona Halep announces appeal of 4-year ban over doping violations
