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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Right now, Jannik Sinner is defending his title as the world’s best male tennis player, at the Australian Open.

But come April, he’ll be defending himself in another arena, in the court of arbitration for sport.

Last year, the tennis world was shocked by revelations both Sinner and women’s world number 2 Iga Świątek had tested positive for banned substances.

Their cases were dealt with in private, raising questions about whether their high profiles and considerable resources gave them an unfair advantage when it came to dodging public scrutiny.

Today, sports journalist and author of the substack “But Do You Actually Like Sport?”, Molly McElwee on the twin doping scandals overshadowing the Australian Open.

It’s Tuesday January 21.

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RUBY:

Molly, welcome to 7am, thank you for coming on the show.

MOLLY:

Thank you for having me.

RUBY:

So there is one player in particular that I want to ask you about. He's a favourite to win. He won last year and he's currently the top ranked men's player in the world. Sinner. What can you tell me about him?

MOLLY:

Jannik Sinner Like you say, he's the world number one. He's the reigning champion in in Melbourne and 2024 was really the year of Jannik Sinner.

Audio excerpt — [crowd cheering]

Audio excerpt — Commentator:

“And a simple, sensational way for Jannik Sinner to win the Australian Open! His maiden major happens in Melbourne!”

MOLLY:

The Aussie Open last year was his first Grand Slam title. He also won the US Open in September.

Audio excerpt — Umpire:

“Game set and match, Sinner.”

Audio excerpt — Commentator:

“Jannik Sinner has just won the US Open!”

MOLLY:

And the Davis Cup with Italy.

Audio excerpt — Commentator:

“Once more, Jannik Sinner, just too good. It is back-to-back Davis Cup titles in this golden age of Italian tennis.”

MOLLY:

He kind of swept through tennis with such ease in a way he's a player that kind of smothers his opponents. He's got an incredible game that allows him to kind of dominate other players. He's very complete, which is quite rare for someone I think so young. He’s 23. But his character kind of defies maybe the Italian stereotypes. I think people expect an Italian tennis player to be kind of fiery, be passionate on court, to kind of bring that emotion. Whereas Sinner is the complete opposite. He keeps a lid on his emotions throughout matches, also off the court as well.

Audio excerpt — On-court interviewer:

“And you're the defending champion here. So what is it that you love about Australia, these fans, this court? What is it that you love about this country?”

Audio excerpt — Jannik Sinner:

“So many things. But you know, mostly the crowd and the fans, they give me so much support.”

MOLLY:

But for sure, he's one of the players who is being looked at along with Carlos Alcaraz as the future of men's tennis. But there's also this kind of dark cloud hanging over him as well because he failed two drugs tests in 2024.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, let's talk about that then. Tell me about the drug tests he failed and about how that came about.

MOLLY:

So it all started for Sinner last March.

Audio excerpt — News Reporter:

“Breaking news concerning the men’s number one. Jannik Sinner tested positive twice for a banned anabolic steroid at India Wells in March.”

MOLLY:

Sinner very quickly told the ITIA, which is the International Tennis Integrity Agency, that he had an explanation for it, they figured out that the source of the Clostebol in his system must have come from his physiotherapist who had sprayed a cut on his own hand with a substance that contained the steroid. And then through a massage session he had with Senna, had inadvertently sprayed that healing spray into his skin.

Audio excerpt — News Host (Sky):

“Trace elements; less than a billionth of a gram of Clostebol. So that is really a small amount.”

MOLLY:

It's kind of a convoluted explanation, but the ITIA accepted it and they ultimately found that Sinner bore no fault, no negligence in the case. And he had not intentionally done anything to dope. The interesting thing is that the public didn't find out about these failed drug tests until August.

Audio excerpt — News Host (Sky):

“March this year, we didn’t know this, but he tested twice, at the time we didn’t know this, twice positive for, uh, Clostebol.”

MOLLY:

And that was on the eve of the US Open, which he went on to win. So it's a strange scenario where the world number one player, the guy who's kind of dominating the sport. He fails to drug test and no one kind of finds out about it, until the agency in charge of doping in the sport decides that he brought no negligence and he's not going to suffer kind of any huge consequences beyond losing his prize money from the two tournaments that he was competing in at the time of the failed drug tests and losing his ranking points from those events.

RUBY:

Okay. And so I know that Sinner isn't the only high profile player to have found himself in a situation like this recently. Can you tell me a bit about the others?

MOLLY:

Yeah. So along with Sinner, Iga Świątek who for the last two years has been the one number one, she's now the world number two as five time grand Slam champion. She also failed a drug test last year.

Audio excerpt — News reporter:

“The international tennis integrity agency has confirmed that Iga Świątek has accepted a one month suspension under the tennis anti doping program.”

MOLLY:

She tested positive for a kind of heart medication called TMZ. And she put it down to contamination of some medication that she had been taking for years, for fatigue and for jetlag.

Audio excerpt — Iga Świątek:

“But I got to say for sure, it wasn't easy. You know, it was probably like the worst time of my life. And just having the feeling that everything you know that I kind of built can be taken away so quickly because of something you have no control over, It just…it was pretty crazy for me.”

MOLLY:

The ITIA and her team were able to establish that the batch of the medication that she had taken had been contaminated. And so, yeah, it was dealt with pretty quickly. She tested positive in August. She competed at the US Open and then she was given a one month ban, but she was able to play out that ban kind of in private. She basically told people that she was suffering from fatigue and she had changed coaches. So she was taking a break from the sport for a month.

I mean, in Świątek’s case, that's kind of been resolved. She's served her one month ban. But in the case of Sinner, we now have this ongoing saga because WADA have come back and appealed the ITIA decision on his case.

Audio excerpt — News Reporter:

“Sinner’s Australian Open campaign is being overshadowed by a new twist in his ongoing doping drama.”

Audio excerpt — News Reporter:

“Well Blake the World Anti Doping Agency has appalled the decision that originally cleared Jannik Sinner after he tested positive twice for steroids in 2024.”

MOLLY:

And that's going to play out in April. And they are actually seeking a one to two year ban for him. So that could have huge consequences for the sport. All the while they're playing at the Australian Open this month.

RUBY:

I mean, what is the conversation that's happening amongst the tennis community right now then around whether or not someone like Sinner, who's case I suppose now is a bit up in the air, should be able to play at the Australian Open given the situation.

MOLLY:

I mean, on the court, it seems like everything is kind of business as usual. You've got Sinner.

Audio excerpt — Commentator:

“Game. A day of overcoming adversity, a massive result for Janik Sinner. And he is through to the quarter finals.”

MOLLY:

It didn't seem like there was any animosity coming from the Melbourne crowd here. But we've had people, including Nick Kyrgios, for example, a huge name in tennis in Australian sport. He's called the entire episode disgusting.

Audio excerpt — Nick Kyrgios:

“It's been handled horrifically in our sport and two world number ones, both getting done for doping is disgusting for our sport. It's a horrible look.”

MOLLY:

Really been heavily critical of Sinner.

Audio excerpt — Nick Kyrgios:

“Well, if my physiotherapist contaminated me and put me in this position, I'd be... I'd probably never talk to the guy again. But he had the guy in this team for five months acting like nothing happened. That's suss as sh-...suss as anything, if you ask me.”

MOLLY:

It's a really dark cloud that has kind of been hovering over tennis and there's other players who have spoken about whether this process has been fair. Someone like two time Grand Slam champion and another former world number one, Simona Halep, has accused the ITIA of dealing with these two cases very differently than how they dealt with her own hers dragged out for nearly two years. She received a four year ban for failing her drug test and had to appeal it, and it was eventually reduced to nine months. But for her, it stinks of being unfair because her case was dealt with in a very public way, whereas Świątek and Sinner’s were not.

And I think the main issue here is not the individual cases, but rather what this whole saga says about the way that we deal with doping and drug testing in sport and whether the systems are completely fair, whether it's a completely equal playing field for everyone.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - what happens when you fail a drug test and you don’t have millions to defend yourself?

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RUBY:

Molly, can we talk a bit more about the equal playing field. What does the Sinner and Świątek saga tell you about what it requires to get through something like this unscathed?

MOLLY:

I mean, the ITIA maintains that every player is treated the same. But the problem with the process is that if you have more resources available, like Sinner, like Świątek, you can get through the process quicker. And that makes a huge difference to where you ultimately will end up in your career. I mean, Świątek has earned 33 million US dollars in career prize money. Sinner has earned 37 like they've got a lot of yeah, they've got a lot of resources behind that. They have huge management teams, they've got sponsors. They keep track of everything they put in their body from food, from supplements, from medication.

Whereas if you're a player outside the top 100, top 200, you can barely afford to have a coach. So how are you going to assemble this kind of, incredible team to defend you. It's something that a British player in recent years Tara Moore has spoken about a lot.

Audio excerpt — Tara Moore:

“I think I have one of the most crazy stories on the tour. You know, I went to Columbia, I failed a drug test out there and it’s just something I never thought I would go through.”

MOLLY:

She's was outside the top 100 trying to build her career. And when she tested positive for a banned substance, she ends up losing 19 months of her career.

Audio excerpt — Tara Moore:

“In this country if you murder someone you have the right to a trial you have the right to a lawyer but this is like almost the opposite. If you don’t have the money or the funds you’re guilty.”

MOLLY:

It took her longer to prove the source of her failed drug test. It's been found that hers was also a case of contamination. But in order to get to the point where she could prove that, she had already fallen 600 ranking places, she's now thousands of pounds in debt to the lawyers that she had to employ at different points in this process. And her career is kind of in tatters. And it's a very kind of delicate balance you've got to find in the sport. And I think there's a lot of people right now who are questioning whether the powers that be have found that delicate balance at all.

RUBY:

Yeah, I mean, I think the stakes couldn't be higher in the sense that people want to be able to trust that the person they're seeing win actually did win and did win fairly.

MOLLY:

Totally. I mean, we've seen how that has played out in much more dramatic ways in other sports. In cycling, for example, with the huge kind of drug scandal that erupted in the start of the century, it's kind of a huge, a huge issue for fans. People want to be able to get behind people and to trust that they are superhuman because they are just so good at their sport, not because of any other reason.

What does it say about the future of tennis if you've got a player like Sinner who if in April his appeal happens and he loses and he's given a one or two year ban, how do we look back on these last few months? How does history kind of correct itself when we look at these titles as titles that need to have kind of an asterisk alongside it? Because someone like Sinner, of his profile, his stature, his ability, he's playing for a space in the kind of history books.

And, it raises all kinds of questions about whether a player should continue playing while this process is going on. It's a very kind of delicate balance you've got to find in the sport. And I think there's a lot of people right now who are questioning whether the powers that be have found that delicate balance at all.

RUBY:

Well, Molly, thank you so much for your time.

MOLLY:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Israel has confirmed 90 Palestinian prisoners have been freed in the first exchange of the ceasefire deal with Hamas.

It comes after three hostages freed by Hamas have been reunited with their families inside Israel.

The ceasefire, which came into effect on Sunday, states that for every Israeli hostage released, 30 Palestinian prisoners will be freed from Israeli jails.

And, online gambling company Sportsbet is facing a class action lawsuit to recover millions of dollars allegedly lost through unlawful in-game bets facilitated by the company.

The class action, launched by Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, alleges that so-called “in-play bets”, or live bets, that involve betting on a sporting event after it has commenced are prohibited in Australia.

The lawsuit is open to anyone who lost winnings using this service in the past six years.

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