Iga Swiatek is the second high-profile tennis player to test positive for a banned substance this year, joining the five-time Grand Slam champion and current world number 2. receive a one-month ban of the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA).
The ITIA announced on Thursday that Swiatek had accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ), a drug used to treat heart conditions which, in a sporting context, can increase blood flow and improve endurance.
This comes just a few months after the men’s world number 1. Jannik sinner tested positive twice for clostebola banned anabolic steroid. Sinner was cleared as the ITIA accepted there was “no fault or negligence” – although the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) appealed.
Meanwhile, Swiatek found herself “at the lowest end of the range for no significant fault or negligence” after the 23-year-old Polish player explained her doping violation was caused by a contaminated supply of melatonin , an over-the-counter medication. , which she uses to combat jet lag and sleep problems.
Following interviews with Swiatek and analysis of the medicine by independent laboratories, the ITIA accepted the explanation that the melatonin supplied to him by his physiotherapist had been contaminated during manufacturing, resulting in a extremely weak trace of TMZ. Swiatek tested positive in an out-of-competition sample on August 12, before the Cincinnati Open.
How did TMZ get into Swiatek’s system?
Swiatek explained that she used melatonin to help regulate her sleep patterns and deal with jet lag, a result of her frequent travel. In Poland, melatonin is classified as a medicine and can be purchased commercially in pharmacies. Swiatek said her physical therapist will usually purchase the product for her.
Swiatek competed at the Paris Olympics, winning the bronze medal on August 2 after losing to Qinwen Zheng in the semifinals the day before. She arrived at the Cincinnati Open shortly before August 12, where she was called to provide a sample for a doping test around 6-7 a.m. A urine sample was collected and taken to a WADA-accredited laboratory in Montreal for analysis.
Swiatek was asked to list on a doping control form any “medications or supplements” she had taken in the past seven days. She provided a list of 14 supplements and medications on the form, but did not include melatonin, although Swiatek later explained that she had ingested two to three tablets of the product around 2 or 3 a.m. that morning- there, when she couldn’t sleep.
In providing evidence to the ITIA, Swiatek explained that she forgot to include melatonin because it was not on her list of medications and supplements that she copied from one form to another. She also said she was tired, her sleep having been interrupted by a summons for doping control. The ITIA later stated that the reasons for this omission were “unsatisfactory”.
Swiatek’s urine sample was split into an A sample and a B sample, and sample A was found to contain the banned substance TMZ. Swiatek was informed of her positive test on September 12 and she responded two days later requesting further analysis of her B sample, which gave the same result as sample A: a trace concentration of 50 pg/ ml.
How Swiatek proved the contamination
Swiatek was provisionally suspended on September 12, which she appealed within 10 days. She denied deliberately or knowingly using TMZ, maintained that she did not know the source of the TMZ in her sample and told the ITIA that it must have been ingested by mistake following contamination.
After being informed of her positive B sample, Swiatek and her team sent packages containing all the products she had used before the August 12 test – including melatonin – to two laboratories, one in Paris and one in Strasbourg. . Analysis of the products used by Swiatek showed that the sample of melatonin tablets – a Polish-made product called LEK-AM Melatonina – that she took on the morning of August 12 was contaminated with TMZ, and these results were sent to ITIA.
In response, ITIA said it would review melatonin tablets at another WADA-accredited laboratory in Salt Lake City, Utah. But the ITIA said it was unable to contact the Polish melatonin manufacturer, despite its attempts by phone and email, to obtain a container of the product from the same batch itself. The ITIA said this was not possible due to the product’s expiry date and non-response from the manufacturer.
Instead, Swiatek’s team provided both the opened container of the melatonin product used on August 12 and a sealed container from the same batch. The ITIA said it “verified that the sealed container obtained came from the same batch as that used by Swiatek (the batch numbers matched) and that the sealed container had a tamper-evident seal.”
On October 4, the Salt Lake City laboratory reported finding TMZ in tablets from opened, previously sealed melatonin containers, and ruled that contamination had occurred during manufacturing. The ITIA ruled that the entire batch of melatonin had been contaminated and, despite its non-response, the ITIA also stated that the melatonin manufacturer also manufactured a TMZ product in the same factory.
Additional testing and ITIA decision
Swiatek was also called for doping tests on August 1 and 2, after her semi-final and bronze medal match at the Paris Olympics, as well as at the US Open. She was informed of her positive test eight days after her quarter-final loss to Jessica Pegula. All other drug tests around the August 12 date were negative, with Swiatek only using the melatonin product that morning because she had trouble sleeping.
The ITIA ruled in favor of Swiatek and found that negative tests, as well as Swiatek’s hair samples which did not contain traces of TMZ, showed that she could not have used the substance as a therapeutic dose before August 12. the violation was at the lower end of the “no significant fault or negligence” range. Swiatek accepted the one-month suspension proposed by the ITIA.
“Once the source of the TMZ was established, it became clear that this was a very unusual case of a contaminated product, which in Poland is a regulated medicine,” said Karen Moorhouse, director general of the ITIA.
“However, the product does not have the same name globally, and the fact that a product is a regulated medicine in one country cannot alone be enough to avoid any level of misconduct. Considering the nature of the drug and all the circumstances, this places this defect at the low end of the scale.
