Halep fears for her career if doping appeal fails

Simona Halep is hopeful a positive appeals decision by a sporting court in Switzerland will mean the end of a doping drama which has dragged on for months.

But if the Court for Arbitration of Sport rules against her, the former WTA No. 1 says her career would certainly be over.

“Four years (the length of her pending ban from tennis after a positive test in late 2022)  is going to be a lot, for my age at least,” the 32-year-old told Euronews. 

“And for an athlete who has done this thing every day for 25 years and dedicated their life to tennis and to sport I don’t know how it’s going to be,

“But it’s catastrophic if it’s going to be four years, and I don’t know how I will handle it.

“Probably, it’s going to be the end of my career… and for something that I didn’t do and that is not my fault, it’s even more catastrophic.”

The double Grand Slam champion says she has never taken any illegal substances and submits that her positive test at the US Open last year was flawed.

“Three days before the positive urine test, I was negative in blood and urine. I’ve been told that it (was an) extremely low quantity of this banned substance, and in those three days I could not have doped.”

She added: ” It has never been the intention to do something wrong or something disrespectful to this sport, because I have respected everything and I dedicated my life.

“I didn’t think to cheat in tennis; I’ve had many, many tests and all of them were negative.

“They never found anything wrong in my blood. So with these two things, I feel confident going and facing CAS.

”“Every day it felt very painful, very emotional, hurtful because I know I didn’t do anything wrong, and I know I’m clean,”