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MELBOURNE, Australia — Iga Swiatek, a self-described “control freak,” is taking new precautions — including holding on to extra samples of medicine she takes, in case they need to be tested at some point — after a doping case she described Friday as “probably, like, the worst time in my life.”
Jannik Sinner, another player who spent time at No. 1 and tested positive in 2024, said ahead of the Australian Open, where he’s the defending champion, that he hasn’t been told when the World Anti-Doping Agency’s appeal of his exoneration will be heard in court.
“I know exactly as much as you guys know,” Sinner said in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference Friday. “We are in a stage where we don’t know many, many things.”
As confident as he repeatedly has said he is about the eventual outcome, the 23-year-old Italian acknowledged that it’s on his mind as the year’s first Grand Slam tournament is set to begin Sunday (Saturday ET).
“Yeah, you think about this, of course,” Sinner said. “I would lie if I would tell you I forget.”
He and Swiatek, a five-time major champion, both were able to go for months last season without anyone knowing what was happening behind the scenes and that they’d failed tests.
Sinner tested positive twice for trace amounts of an anabolic steroid at a tournament in March; those results — and the fact that he was cleared by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) — did not come out until August, shortly before the start of the U.S. Open, which he would go on to win. He was cleared because the ITIA accepted his explanation: A trainer exposed Sinner to a banned substance by giving him a massage shortly after using a cream on his own injured finger.
Swiatek failed an out-of-competition drug test in August, but her one-month suspension wasn’t known until late November, after she sat out three events without revealing why. By the time her case was announced by the ITIA — which accepted that her sample was tainted because of a contaminated sleep aid — all that was left for her to serve was a week, which landed in the offseason.
On Friday, Swiatek described the initial period she was sidelined, which she talked up at the time to personal reasons, as “pretty chaotic” and said, “For sure, it wasn’t easy; it was probably, like, the worst time in my life.”
“It got pretty awkward. Like we chose for the first tournament to say ‘personal reasons’ because we honestly thought the suspension is going to be lifted soon. From the beginning it was obvious that something was contaminated because the level of this substance in my urine was so low that it had to be contamination,” Swiatek said.
“We started, yeah with ‘personal issues,’” she added, “because I needed also time to figure everything out.”
Swiatek said she was worried about what other players’ reactions would be at the start of this season.
“Besides the fact I couldn’t play, this was the worst thing for me: What people would say. Because I always worked hard to be a good example, to show my integrity, show good behavior,” she said. “Having no control over this case really freaked me out a bit. But in the locker room, I mean, the girls are great.”