Novak Djokovic has heavily criticised the “strange” punishment for Jannik Sinner after his positive drugs tests last year and accused the authorities of “favouritism” in the doping case.
It was announced over the weekend that world No 1 Sinner has reached a settlement with the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) over a pair of positive drugs test in March last year.
The Italian, who won the Australian Open last month, has received a three-month ban and is suspended from 9 February until 4 May, meaning he won’t miss a single grand slam and will be eligible to play in the French Open which starts on 19 May at Roland Garros.
He admitted “partial responsibility” for mistakes by his team which led to him twice testing positive for traces of clostebol and although he was potentially facing a two-year ban, Wada surprisingly withdrew their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) against his initial exoneration by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (Itia) announced in August – instead settling for a three-month ban.
Sinner has already won three grand slam titles at the age of just 23 and 24-time grand slam champion Djokovic has urged a complete overhaul of the anti-doping system, believing the world No 1’s status earned him preferential treatment.
“There’s a majority of the players that I’ve talked to in the locker room, not just in the last few days, but also last few months, that are not happy with the way this whole process has been handled,” explained Djokovic.
“A majority of the players don’t feel that it’s fair. A majority of the players feel like there is favouritism happening. It seems like, it appears that you can almost affect the outcome if you are a top player, if you have access to the top lawyers.
“Jannik will have a three-month suspension due to some mistakes and negligence of some members of his team, who are working on the tour. This is also something that I personally and many other players find strange.”
Sinner wasn’t the only high-profile player to receive a surprisingly lenient sentence for a doping violation last year, with five-time grand slam champion Iga Swiatek accepting a one-month ban after testing positive for the banned heart drug trimetazidine.
By contrast, the recently-retired Simona Halep was handed a four-year ban by the Itia in 2022 after testing positive for the blood-boosting drug roxadustat and had to appeal to Cas to reduce the suspension to nine months after arguing it was the result of a tainted supplement.
British player Tara Moore also received a 19-month suspension that effectively destroyed her career for a positive test, despite an independent tribunal ruling that she had likely been contaminated by meat consumed in a local restaurant.
“I guess only the top players’ images matter,” Moore wrote on social media. “I guess only the independent tribunal’s opinion on the top players is taken as sound and right. Yet, they question them in my case. Just makes no sense.”
And Djokovic also highlighted this perceived two-tier justice.
“Simona Halep and Tara Moore and some other players that are maybe less known that have been struggling to resolve their cases for years, or have gotten the ban for years,” added Djokovic. “There is so much inconsistencies between the cases.
“Right now it’s a ripe time for us to really address the system, because the system and the structure obviously doesn’t work (for) anti-doping, it’s obvious. I hope that in the next period of the near future that the governing bodies are going to come together, of our tours and the tennis ecosystem, and try to find a more effective way to deal with these processes. It’s inconsistent, and it appears to be very unfair.”
