Five-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek accepts a one-month suspension in doping case

Poland's Iga Swiatek returns the ball against Italy's Jasmine Paolini during the Billie Jean King Cup semi-final tennis match at Martin Carpena Sports Hall in Malaga, southern Spain, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Five-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, a heart medication known as TMZ, the International Tennis Integrity Agency announced Thursday.

Swiatek failed an out-of-competition drug test in August, and the ITIA accepted her explanation that the result was unintentional and was caused by the contamination of a nonprescription medication, melatonin, that Swiatek was taking for issues with jet lag and sleeping.

It was determined her level of fault was “at the lowest end of the range for no significant fault or negligence,” the ITIA said.

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This is the second recent high-profile doping case in tennis: The top-ranked man, Jannik Sinner, failed two tests for a steroid in March and was cleared in August, right before the start of the U.S. Open, which he went on to win for his second Grand Slam title of the season.

Swiatek is a 23-year-old from Poland who was ranked No. 1 most of the past two seasons but is now at No. 2. She won the French Open in June for her fifth major championship and took home a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics in early August.

TMZ is the drug at the centre of the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.

Swiatek formally admitted the anti-doping rule violation on Wednesday and accepted her penalty.

She already was provisionally suspended from Sept. 22 to Oct. 4, missing three tournaments during the post-U.S. Open hard-court swing in Asia — the Korea Open, the China Open and the Wuhan Open.

That provisional ban was ended after her appeal showed that her test result came inadvertently from contaminated melatonin.

Because the ultimate agreement was for a month suspension, she will serve the remaining eight days now, while there’s no competition, and be cleared to return to play as of Dec. 4.

Swiatek also was fined the prize money of $158,944 that she earned for her semifinal run at the Cincinnati Open in August, the event immediately following the positive test.

“Once the source of the TMZ had been established, it became clear that this was a highly unusual instance of a contaminated product, which in Poland is a regulated medicine. However, the product does not have the same designation globally, and the fact that a product is a regulated medication in one country cannot of itself be sufficient to avoid any level of fault," ITIA CEO Karen Moorhouse said.

“Taking into account the nature of the medication, and all the circumstances, it does place that fault at the lowest end of the scale," Moorhouse said. "This case is an important reminder for tennis players of the strict liability nature of the World Anti-Doping Code and the importance of players carefully considering the use of supplements and medications.”