Sunday January 12, the Australian Open opens under special auspices. Rarely has the climate of the first major Tennis event of the year been so heavy. And the stifling heat of the Australian summer, this time, is not the cause. It is the doping cases which are weighing down the atmosphere.
It is all the more difficult to ignore these as they concern the tournament favorites, for both men and women: the Italian Jannik Sinner, defending champion, tested positive for clostebol (an anabolic ) twice, in March 2024, when the Polish Iga Swiatek, semi-finalist in 2022, tested positive for trimetazidine (a treatment for angina), in August.
In both cases, the sanctions were light: the doses detected were tiny and the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) validated the thesis of accidental contamination. The Polish woman said she had been contaminated by a medicine sold in Poland, which she had bought to manage sleep problems linked to jet lag.
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