Simona Halep has been suspended for four years for various anti-doping violations, the International Tennis Integrity Agency announced on Tuesday.
The 31-year-old Romanian, who has won two career Grand Slam titles, was facing two charges — she failed a drug test at the 2022 U.S. Open and her biological passport showed irregularities, said the ITIA.
A panel concluded that Halep “wilfully violated anti-doping rules.”
Halep has been provisionally suspended since October 2022. Her four-year suspension will expire on October 6, 2026.
Halep rose to first place in the WTA world rankings in 2017. She won the Wimbledon tournament in 2019, after defeating American Serena Williams in the final. She also won the French Open in 2018.
Halep, who has previously blamed contaminated dietary supplements for drug test results, plans to challenge the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“I will continue my training and will do everything in my power to clear my reputation of these false allegations and return to the field,” Halep said in a statement.
She added that she “will analyze all possible legal remedies against the targeted dietary supplement company”.
The ITIA listened to the testimony of Halep and her scientific experts, but concluded that the player was guilty on both counts.
“The court accepted Halep’s argument that she ingested contaminated dietary supplements, but determined that the volume consumed by the player simply did not correspond to the concentration of Roxadustat (an anti-anemia drug) found in her positive sample,” mentioned the ITIA.
Halep’s biological passport was examined by a committee of experts. Such passports provide a basic reading of the substances present in an athlete’s body and are seen as a way to identify cases of sports doping.
The court mentioned that only an “alleged case of doping” can explain the irregularities noted in Halep’s biological passport.