
I asked Kyrgios and Raducanu if they fear a doping ban
Iga Swiatek and Jannik Sinner’s positive tests have left tennis players living in fear over accidentally consuming banned substances
MELBOURNE — “I’m a control freak,” says Iga Swiatek with a smile.
It has taken her a long time, but the world No 2 is finally finding a way to laugh, however wryly, about the failed drugs test that earned her a one-month ban from tennis.
Last year, Swiatek tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a substance used medically to treat conditions like angina but one that is banned by the World Anti-Doping Authority (Wada) because of its potential to enhance performance by helping the heart function better.
The 23-year-old successfully proved that the TMZ had been a contaminant of the melatonin she was taking for insomnia over the summer, but was still handed a one-month suspension and said before the Australian Open that the whole process was “the worst time in her life”.
It has done little to dilute Swiatek’s natural impulse to control everything around her, and if anything has intensified it, even though in reality the contamination was entirely out of her control.
“The thing is that the melatonin that I took was a medication,” Swiatek said on Friday.
“Already from the beginning it should be clean and tested in a different way than supplements, like more precise way.
“I changed some stuff. But still the contaminated thing was a medication, so there was no way to avoid that anyway because the medications are automatically treated like they’re tested and clean.”
She also pointed out that “there was no way to know”, a chilling warning to a locker room increasingly anxious about failing a test inadvertently, especially after Jannik Sinner also accidentally tested positive in 2024.
“Most of them even approached me. They’re like, ‘Hey, how can we avoid this? Is there any way that we can be more careful?’,” Swiatek added. “They are worried this can happen to them as well.”
There isn’t much Swiatek can tell them. The reason she was given such a meagre ban – she called it “symbolic“ – is that there were not many ways she could have avoided it. The final decision noted that she could, in theory, have batch-tested the medicine herself, but as a preventative measure it doesn’t seem particularly practical: when the Pole failed her test, she declared 14 different supplements and medicines on her doping control form.
There are companies like Inform Sport in the UK or NSF in the US which offer the service, but it is not cheap and has to be repeated for every batch. Swiatek could perhaps afford it but to the rest of the tour, it’s not feasible. And even then, it’s not foolproof and can only mitigate the punishment meted out in the case of contamination by a banned substance.
Players can also plug the names of their medicines into the Global Drug Reference Online to find out if it contains a banned substance and its Wada status.
For some medicines, they can apply for a Therapeutic Use Exemption – as Alexander Zverev does to allow him to manage his Type 1 diabetes.
The International Tennis Integrity Agency, which polices such issues in tennis, is also contactable by any player for advice, and as recently as this week has been running workshops for coaches to better understand the system of anti-doping.
Doping is, supposedly, strict liability and so the presence of a substance is enough to convict – although Sinner’s case, where the only punishment was the removal of his prize money and points from the week when he tested positive, shows that if you can prove “no fault or negligence”, you can get away without a ban, as the Italian did.
Much of the medicinal admin, a key part of any defence, is managed by a player’s team, especially higher up the rankings, but extreme vigilance on their part is a must too. Emma Raducanu was bitten by some ants last week and her first thought, when getting medical attention, was not the impact of the ”injury“ – but the potential impact on her doping status.
“I basically got bitten really badly by these jumping ants or something,” Raducanu said.
“So I spent the second part of my day coming in to see the doctor to try to get some remedies, because I had a bit of an allergic reaction. But I’m fine now.
“Someone was giving me this antiseptic spray to try to ease the bites. I didn’t want to take it. I didn’t want to spray it. I was just like left there with my swollen ankle and hand. I was, like, I’m just going to tough it out because I don’t want to risk it!”
She added: “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take onboard, what we use.
“It’s obviously a concern on our mind. We’re all in the same boat. I think it’s just how we manage as best as we can the controllables.
“If something out of our control happens, then it’s going to be a bit of a struggle to try and prove.”
Some players have described the “paranoia” or “permanent anxiety” of fearing an inadvertent failure.
And many see the rigorous processes as a major inconvenience, such as Novak Djokovic, who complained at the Davis Cup in 2023 that he had been tested before a match, and that the testing officials followed him around the venue for hours until he was ready to do so. Privately, many players have echoed his feelings, complaining that officials appear to be deliberately difficult.
But they don’t all see it as such a problem. Nick Kyrgios has been a vocal critic of Sinner in the wake of his failed test, which was the result of a product his physio used on a cut on his own thumb before massaging the player.
“I feel like that’s the only thing tennis has been speaking about the last six months,” Kyrgios said at his pre-tournament press conference.
“I’ve been tested four times in the last couple months. I got tested in my home three days ago, so…
“For me, it hasn’t been a problem at all in my career. I’ve been on the tour now for 10-plus years. For me, I’m not worried at all ’cause I know that I’m really, really on top of what’s going on in my team.
“I’m very confident in myself that I’m not going to be accidentally putting something in my system.”