(Paris) American tennis player Varvara Lepchenko, who was among the world’s top twenty, has been suspended for four years for doping, the international tennis federation announced on Friday.
Posted yesterday at 4:02 p.m.
The 35-year-old player tested positive at the WTA tournament in Budapest last year for the “adrafinil and/or modafinil metabolite”, the ITF said, a stimulant banned by the world anti-doping agency ( WADA).
“The independent tribunal imposed a four-year ban, which began on August 19, 2021, when Ms Lepchenko was provisionally suspended,” the ITF said in a statement.
This is the second time that the player, of Uzbek origin, has been punished for doping. She had tested positive in 2016 for meldonium, a substance whose use also prompted the suspension of Russian player Maria Sharapova.
But the ITF clarified that this second case was considered a first breach “because she (Lepchenko) was not at fault in the first case”.