Former world number one tennis women's singles player Harlem was banned for 4 years due to doping violations
The International Tennis Integrity Committee announced on the 12th that former world number one female singles player Halep has been banned for four years for two doping violations, with a ban until October 6, 2026.
31 year old Romanian player Halep has won the Grand Slam championship twice, but was eliminated in the first round of the US Open last year, causing a huge upset at the time. It was during the first round of the competition that she underwent an in competition doping test and was later found to be using the banned drug rosacetam. In addition, Harlep's athlete bio passport also showed abnormal results.
Although Halep submitted a series of evidence during the hearing to plead guilty, claiming that food contamination caused a positive result for rosacetam, experts concluded after review that the concentration of metabolites produced by food contamination did not even reach the concentration of prohibited substances in her urine sample, thus maintaining the verdict of doping violation. In addition, Halep conducted 51 blood tests on the athlete's biological passport, and experts believe that she used prohibited substances during 2022.
According to the data, rosacetam is a drug used to treat renal anemia, which helps stimulate red blood cell production. The athlete's biological passport uses a method of long-term tracking and recording of the athlete's blood indicators to find abnormal changes in blood count, in order to determine whether the athlete has used prohibited substances.