Of all the people shocked by tennis’s recent doping cases – and especially by the lenient sentences handed to Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek – nobody has expressed more self-righteous fury than that other former world No1, Simona Halep.
In a recent Instagram post, liked by world No 2 Alexander Zverev and other leading players, Halep highlighted the contrast between her own fate – in which a four-year ban was eventually reduced to nine months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport – and the way that Sinner and Swiatek were allowed to play on with barely any interruption.
“I can’t find and I don’t think there can be a logical answer,” wrote Halep, who is 33. “It can only be bad will from ITIA [The International Tennis Integrity Agency], the organisation that has done absolutely everything to destroy me despite the evidence.”
Almost a week on, Halep tells Telegraph Sport that her outburst was the culmination of months of anxiety and sleepless nights.
“Big pain, big pain,” says Halep, when asked about her reaction to the treatment of her two fellow grand-slam champions. “I felt like they [the ITIA] were unfair to me before, but now it’s even more. I was so, so upset and so sad when I saw the situation. It’s just unacceptable, from my point of view.
“Yeah, I lost my sleep again. I lost it for the two years during the process [of contesting her own doping ban]. Then I got it back. And now, after [what happened], for a few days, yeah, I lost it again. All the negative thinking, negative thoughts, it’s not easy to handle.”
All three of these major winners have now been cleared of deliberate doping. But there was a significant procedural difference. Both Sinner and Swiatek moved quickly to identify the source of the banned substance, and were thus able to submit their appeals almost immediately, whereas Halep’s case took considerably longer to assemble. Indeed, the ITIA says it has still been unable to locate roxadustat – the banned substance at the heart of her case – in the “Keto MCT” supplement she had been taking. But Halep’s own expert, Professor Jean-Claude Alvarez, told the CAS tribunal that he had found it, and his explanation was eventually accepted, leading to the lifting of her ban in March.
“I heard some people said that I didn’t discover the contamination faster,” Halep explains via a Zoom call from Dubai. “But the substance [Keto MCT] that I had was so difficult to find. You find it in China or somewhere else, I don’t know exactly, and it took time to be delivered so they can make the test. It was not my fault because I didn’t want to find [the contaminant] – you know what I mean?
“What I believe is not fair, either, is that they announced my case straight away, and I got all the heat from the press, and for these two players they kept it secret, and they just said about the case when everything was done, so it’s very weird. And I asked also to lift the provisional suspension to be able to play. I said, ‘If you believe in the end that I am guilty, you take the points back and all the money and everything, but let me play,’ because I wanted to keep the rhythm. I asked this about two or three times, but now they [Sinner and Swiatek] could play.
“The woman player – I don’t want to give name, you know about who I’m talking about – she had the three-week suspension, then she played two events, and then she gets again suspension. What is this? I mean, I don’t understand. So I feel it is not fair.”
While Sinner missed no tennis at all, Swiatek incurred a one-month ban, and skipped the Asian swing as a result. But Halep lost everything – or, at least, she seemed to have done so when she received that initial four-year sentence, which had been compounded by a secondary charge involving suspicious blood data on her Athlete Biological Passport. By the time her CAS appeal bore fruit, in March, she had already been away from the court for 17 months.
“I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to come back,” says Halep, who played her comeback match in Miami just a fortnight after the ban was lifted. “I thought ‘I know the feelings, I know how I have to train’ – but suddenly it was so difficult to manage the emotions before the matches. I have always been emotional before matches, but now I feel sick in the stomach again.
“When I did play matches, I felt a little bit soft [physically]. The steps that you have to do towards the ball, towards the corners, they were not there. I think the brain was not sending the right message to the legs.
“Every day I stay on the court, doing all what I did before. But when I start to play a match, it’s different. I played two tournaments, and for three days I was so sore. So this is my main goal: to get some matches, to get some wins, to get the confidence back.”
Halep now finds herself in an unusual position: a former Wimbledon champion (from the summer of 2019) who is ranked at No 879 in the world. Having played only five matches this year – and won just once – she is in Dubai for a training camp. But she does not know when she will next compete, as she is relying on wild-card invitations into tournaments. Her first confirmed event of the year will be in Cluj-Napoca – the capital of Transylvania – in early February.
Does she think the game has changed in her absence? “I feel from the TV that they have a lot of power, like service 185-190kmh. Of course, we had in the past players serving like that – Serena [Williams], [Petra] Kvitova. But now I feel like most of them are serving very strong. Always, I return very well, even when [Karolina] Pliskova was serving. But I’m not like three years ago, four years ago, when I was in the top five. So I don’t know how my body will handle that right now.”
‘When you face difficult times, you lose many people’
During her time in tennis limbo, Halep leaned heavily on her family – and particularly on her brother, who spent five years as a tennis hopeful before opting for a university education.
“I didn’t go out much. In Romania, if I was going to the gym, people were asking me: ‘Why do they treat you like this?’ Questions like this all negative, and it was tough to manage. So I can say I avoided people a little bit, but not because I felt shame. I always knew that I’m innocent and I’m clean, so I had my head up, but it was just tiring to be asked the same questions every day.
“I used to speak to my brother all the nights I didn’t sleep, texting and talking. And my parents, of course, but you cannot say to your parents all the feelings, because they suffer. And I had some friends – few, few friends. When you face difficult times, you lose many people. Or you just realise that you never had those people.
“But what I am most happy about is that I can smile, I’m healthy. I see it is gone, and now I really enjoy every day. Now I enjoy more also the tennis. It’s not the pressure that I used to have. And now, when I look back, I am a little bit upset with myself because I put so much pressure on myself. I don’t regret that, because I was able to be No 1, so it’s a mix. I accept myself, but now I just want to see different things.”
No one, not even the woman herself, has any idea how Halep’s comeback will progress. Her rise to the top of the world rankings – a position she held for 64 weeks between October 2017 and January 2019 – was all the more impressive because of her slight frame, which bore closer comparison to Justine Henin or Martina Hingis than Serena Williams or Maria Sharapova.
Her exquisite footwork stemmed from many hours of football as a young girl, and indeed her ancestry: father Stere played second-division football in the Romanian leagues. But when you rely on mobility rather than power, you tend to be more severely affected by the passage of time.
‘I like to have good relations with everyone’
She did not watch much tennis while she was away, finding it too painful, though she did enjoy following Karolina Muchova’s run to last year’s French Open final. “I loved how she played with the volleys and how confident she was.” Are they good friends? “We are not friends, but I sent her a message because I like to appreciate. Ash Barty was sending me a message every now and then. She’s super nice, and her kid is so cute.”
How about her old coaches? “Darren [Cahill], he was supporting me and he told me that I can come back.” As for Patrick Mouratoglou, whose Academy staff had recommended the infamous Keto MCT supplement, “We were speaking a little bit, but we speak normal, like, not messaging non-stop. I like to have good relations with everyone, so I want to get over it. I realised that the health is the most important, and then we figure out everything.”
With regard to the supplement recommendation, Halep says “I always listened to my team. I asked if they [the supplements] are clean. They knew how strict I am on everything I take. So everybody knew that they have to check, like, very strictly. But it was a mistake. And I don’t want to, like I said in my post recently, I don’t want to feel… that meanness? I don’t want to live my life with that feeling.”
Last weekend’s emotional Instagram message was a rare eruption from a woman who, during her time at the top of the game, was always known for her level-headedness and lack of obvious ego. Eventually, though, her sense of unfairness at the recent cases simply boiled over.
“It took me so long to express these emotions,” Halep says. “Because, during the process, you are not allowed to speak. And then you are very introverted, and you cannot speak about it. It was during the night, and I just felt to write those words.
“I had replies from many people, and many messages on private. They were so happy that I expressed and that I was loud, because probably they realise how heavy it is to keep everything inside. So they encouraged me to speak more often. Probably I will do. I felt good. I felt like, ‘OK, everybody knows now how I feel.’”
‘I’m checking how many points I need to get into the top 100’
One remaining frustration is that lowly ranking. After everything she has done in the game, Halep believes that she does not belong with the college students and part-timers on the fringes of the world’s top 1000.
“After I was released, and I had only a nine-month ban, I asked for the ranking because now I realise how difficult it is to wait for a wild card. You have to think: ‘How should I practise? How should I prepare?’ So all this is really tiring. I understood the player council didn’t want to give me the ranking that I had last July, and also WTA didn’t agree. So this was very disappointing, because I really feel and I really believe that I deserve to get it back.
“I never looked at the points in my entire life. But now I was checking how many points I need to get into the top 100. It’s about 900, so I will see. If I’m good enough, I will be there.
“Most of the people say that you can get depressed when you stop tennis. Honestly, for me, it was a little bit better, because I could discover myself. I could discover Simona, you know, and I try to see what I like to live, how to live. So I didn’t have this chance until now. And as I always say, I like to see the positive part, and I took it and it helped me to be good today.
“If I enjoy tennis more, this is gonna be a victory – even if I’m not successful like before. I believe is difficult to be like before, in my opinion, but I’m doing everything I can to try.”
