British tennis star given FOUR-YEAR doping ban despite being cleared 18 months ago

Daily Mirror

3 days ago

The International Tennis Integrity Agency's appeal over the decision to clear Tara Moore has been upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and she's now been suspended
British tennis star Tara Moore has been hit with a four-year ban for doping - despite being cleared 18 months ago. Moore, 32, had been allowed to play again following an independent tribunal last year.
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But the International Tennis Integrity Agency's appeal over the decision to clear her has been upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and she's now been suspended with immediate effect. Moore's ban will be reduced, though, as she served the first 19 months through a provisional suspension which began after the case came to light in 2022.
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The Hong Kong-born star was Britain's top-ranked doubles player at the time, having tested positive for nandrolone and boldenone during a tournament in the Colombian capital of Bogota in April 2022. An independent tribunal ruled that contaminated meat was the source of her positive drugs test and that Moore 'bore no fault or negligence'.
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The 32-year-old said that she'd been through '19 months of lost time and emotional distress', adding that her reputation had been tarnished as a result of the case. Moore returned to the ITF World Tour last year and was in the draw for Wimbledon, the US Open and featured at the Australian Open in January.
She won't be allowed to return to the court until the beginning of 2028. A statement from CAS read: "After reviewing the scientific and legal evidence, the majority of the CAS Panel considered that the player did not succeed in proving that the concentration of nandrolone in her sample was consistent with the ingestion of contaminated meat.
"The panel concluded that Ms Moore failed to establish that the ADRV (Anti-Doping Rule Violation) was not intentional. The appeal by the ITIA is therefore upheld and the decision rendered by the Independent Tribunal is set aside."
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ITIA chief executive Karen Moorhouse argued that Moore's explanation wasn't 'adequate', saying: "For the ITIA, every case is considered according to the individual facts and circumstances.
"Our bar for appealing a first instance decision is high, and the decision is not taken lightly. In this case, our independent scientific advice was that the player did not adequately explain the high level of nandrolone present in their sample. Today's ruling is consistent with this position.
"We understand that players and their support teams may have questions about this decision, and we will answer these fully once we have reviewed the details of the ruling."
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Moore's suspension comes at a time where the topic of doping in tennis has been intensely discussed. Both the men's and women's singles champions at Wimbledon, Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek, had served bans after failing drugs tests.
It's the first time in Wimbledon history that both the men's and women's champions have served suspensions for banned substances. "I don't think it's a good look for the sport," Nick Kyrgios, who later posted an asterisk emoji following Sinner's win, said ahead of both singles finals.
Italian Sinner had tested positive for low levels of the banned anabolic steroid clostebol in March 2024, earning him two provisional bans which he appealed against and had lifted within one and three days respectively. The 23-year-old was later cleared of any wrongdoing by an independent tribunal after they accepted that an over-the-counter spray to treat a cut on his hand had been inadvertently contaminated by his physiotherapist.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), however, appealed against the panel's ruling that Sinner 'bore no fault or negligence' and said that it was seeking a ban of between one and two years. In February, shortly after the 23-year-old retained his Australian Open title, it was announced that Sinner and WADA had reached a controversial settlement which saw him banned for just three months.
Six-time Grand Slam winner Swiatek tested positive for heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ) in August 2024 and served a one-month suspension which ended in early December. The ITIA accepted that the Pole's test was caused by contamination of a regulated non-prescription medicine which she said she took for jet lag and sleep problems.