vive le beau jeu !
Talk Tennis Guru
too late now... 
Tennis needs to introduce a zero tolerance doping policy
- Thread starter Spencer Gore
- Start date
roysid
Legend
Is it 0 seconds for Sinner?
He was docked indian wells points and prize money
Lleytonstation
Talk Tennis Guru
The only option is the second one.
Don Felder
Semi-Pro
Criminal law concepts have no place here. The better analogy is civil law, where the burden of proof is much lower.
I think players should get 3 tries to pass each doping test. If they don't pass in 3 tries, they should then be given as many as they need to pass.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
Civil law is not relevant here either, as this process works through private mediation using arbitrators agreed to by the parties.
Sinner and Swiatek have already tested positive so they have to argue against a suspension due to absence of fault or negligence.
At this point, the arbitrators use a lower standard than the criminal law.
Sinner and Swiatek have already tested positive so they have to argue against a suspension due to absence of fault or negligence.
At this point, the arbitrators use a lower standard than the criminal law.
LOBALOT
Legend
This isn't the law it is a player association. A club basically.
The club rules are you test positive you are busted. If a player tests positive they should get the boot. No excuses no sissy this or that excuses and all this wissification of the rules and fairness.
Doping is not illegal on its own so If they want to dope let them dope in their own dopers league.
In this league they should be out including Doper Iga and Doper Sinner.
TearTheRoofOff
G.O.A.T.
Oh of course it could happen, that's the only reason the goalposts can shift up the Esher infinite stairs in the first place.
taster
Rookie
I was using a legal analogy to prove an ethical point, and have been quite explicit about that a few times in this discussion . Moral principles can be transported from one paradigm to another
And the idea that players should be able to challenge a positive test is sound, for the reasons i've given in this discussion.
You haven't addressed any of those here, so there's nothing to discuss with you.
NaDjoFed
Semi-Pro
I am very much for option number 2
LOBALOT
Legend
That is whimpy crap. They test positive they are done. The ethical failure isn't in applying the rules. The ethical failure is taking the banned substance.
Enough blaming the testers and process as it isn't their fault that Sinner, Iga, etc took the banned substances.
The blame belongs with the dopers.
taster
Rookie
Yes, but in civil law the defendant is still able to present a case against the prosecution. In essence, that's the position I've been making.
If you have an outright ban with a positive test, the opportunity for the players to defend themselves doesn't exist.
LOBALOT
Legend
This isn't civil law. It is a club. If they want to dope let them go dope someplace else and play in another club.
taster
Rookie
Me too, and while I'm sceptical about Sinner, the idea of an innocent player being banned takes precedence for me.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
This is essentially the situation now, but everyone has the right to natural justice and this occurs through the ITIA process.
You can't just get booted. If this happened players would go to civil courts and the whole system would collapse.
You can't just get booted. If this happened players would go to civil courts and the whole system would collapse.
LOBALOT
Legend
Baloney. Testing is very accurate. I would rather just ban any that test +.
taster
Rookie
Quite, no one is saying it's ok to dope, this discussion is about what counts as sufficient burden of proof to ban players, read the whole discussion.
LOBALOT
Legend
The positive test is the proof. What are arguing?
The test comes back + you are a doper and you are done. Simple.
taster
Rookie
It's not the accuracy of the question that's' crucial here, rather it's are there justified defences to the positive test.
taster
Rookie
Go on, have a guess!
The Guru
Legend
Right but I think in cases like this you should have to prove innocence and guilt is assumed. If they could show video evidence of their stories or even like text messages confirming it or any sort of evidence besides oral testimony from people with a massive incentive to lie then fine maybe no ban. But otherwise the outcome is likely favoring cheaters at the expense of the innocent.
LOBALOT
Legend
Gazelle
G.O.A.T.
Because you are a slave to big headlines?
You think doping in tennis started with Sinner and Swiatek?
LOBALOT
Legend
No you don't the test showed it was +. They are guilty.
There is no story telling. Story telling is why you have this mess. Can you imagine what it would be like if they actually just took the result and that is that.
The risk goes way up. Who is going to try to make up stories then??????
taster
Rookie
no, but they are significant, it's not hard to work out.
The Guru
Legend
If there was video proof of the massage taking place and Sinner having no idea about the cream you'd still punish him? I think that's dumb. I agree he should be banned but if he could genuinely prove no intent then he shouldn't be punished.
LOBALOT
Legend
it doesn't mater. A video isn't proof of anything. Then all you do is dope and then take a video of yourself enjoying a massage.
No video. No stories. No boyfriends. None of that.
Quit covering for a doper.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
You test positive and you are liable, not guilty. Innocence and guilt rest on intention. Intention will get you a higher penalty, but the fact is that once you test positive the burden of proof is on you.
The Guru
Legend
Agreed and Sinner has not passed that burden imo
What is the false positive rate for these tests?
Why are we changing the definition of the word doper. It refers to a person who frequently or habitually uses performance enhancing drugs. It does not apply to a laboratory’s sensitivity for detecting trace amounts of potential contaminants.
Tennis as a sport needs to get restructure the testing protocols and have it make sense for all players not just the ones with money and lawyers…
Why are we changing the definition of the word doper. It refers to a person who frequently or habitually uses performance enhancing drugs. It does not apply to a laboratory’s sensitivity for detecting trace amounts of potential contaminants.
Tennis as a sport needs to get restructure the testing protocols and have it make sense for all players not just the ones with money and lawyers…
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
The doping regime is based on strict liability. If you test positive then you are doping. Then the question is intentional or unintentional. If the latter is there fault or negligence or none.
TrickyWithTheWindy
New User
Yes, that was Blackstone's commentary on the criminal justice system, where an accused's life and liberty is in play. You're applying it to a regulatory context that did not exist during Blackstone's life. There is no similar concern here. No athlete faces a death sentence. No athlete faces a jail sentence. His concerns have no relevance in these situations. This is about integrity in sports. Foolishness, carelessness and naivety may be worthy of punishment here. We may decide that integrity in sports is worth suspending/fining a few careless athletes.
GrassCourtFan
Legend
I wish that was the IRL choice we have - the third option (that we actually get) is “powerful go free (both guilty and innocent), powerless get punished (guilty or innocent).”
gamelovergold
Rookie
one dirty fish spoils the whole pond. Today #1 player is in spotlight for wrong reasons. If your advice is to be followed that let 10 guilty person go free than an innocent is punished it looks very good on high morals but what it acheives is that guilt is fine as long as you are not caught or you can fabricate story for you '"""innocently and unknowingly "" taken the banned substance.
I again repeat no innocent person should be punished but if situation is such that 10 are roaming free to save 1 than i would like that even at the cost of breaking the moral values 11 should be fined.
And again repeating need of the hour should be the deciding factor and WADA or other such agencies should be ready to become villans in public eye if they can clear doping from tennis or other sports.
Regarding how many players are doping and how many are innocent there is no such data .
Suppose out of 100 players only 1 is doping 99 are innocent but if 2 people are found gulity with 1doper and 1 innocent player and if there is no way to found who is guilty i personally will ban both but by going by your idea both 2 players will go free because there was no way to find who was guilty. And that guilty person will go and find new ways to cheat because he was not penalized first time. Next time he will dope carefully not be caught and thus whole justice becomes a joke. If players dont have fear of some serious punishment than you will not stop player taking PED .
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mental midget
Hall of Fame
seriously, i mean, how hard is it to steer clear of a certain list of chemicals if your multi-million dollar career is presumably on the line? but clearly...it's not, at least for the tour moneymakers.
i guess my question is, why do they bother 'catching' the top players in the first place, if this sort of PR swirl, comical excuse-peddling, and some negligible fine/suspension is the only result?
Terenigma
G.O.A.T.
My answer to this is there would be too many people to control or pay off and It's easier to control the narrative than deny it completely. Sinner and Swaitek are literally two of the biggest names in tennis right now, both at the top of their game, both have been number 1 this year and to find them both guilty of doping and actively act on it with long bans would destroy the sport of tennis. To admit to the positive tests but give them both plausable deniability is the safer option.
I think there are some idealistic employees who failed to get the memo about not catching top players, or decided to simply ignore it because they believe in fairness.
Admitting to the positive results and not acting about it is more detrimental to the sport than not catching anyone. Remember that the big3 were never caught despite many rumours. When you admit to something, there is certainly in the minds of the fans, which is much worse than some lingering suspicion.
taster
Rookie
The certainty of epistemic uncertainty should lead us towards leniency, lest we wrongfully punish the innocent, which is not only Blackstone's commentary on the criminal justice system, but is applicable to any circumstance where we cannot be sure our punishment's are justified.
Athletes don't face a jail sentence, but the impact on their career or reputation can be profound and damaging nonetheless. Whether it's a player suspected of doping, a friend you suspect may have stolen something from you or the criminal justice system, unless we are certain of their guilt, we should hold our condemnation and allow them a defence.
taster
Rookie
Again, look at the principle you're advocating, which is about deterring and not about justice.
Your position will mean punishing someone who is innocent, if you're fine with that then live with it, but understand what that means.
Imagine your favourite player, lets imagine Federer (i've no idea whether you like him, just insert your favourite here). Federer takes a drug for a cold which he genuinely thinks is ok, because he was given the wrong advice by his team and he tests positive for a banned substance and then he's banned from the game in 2002. He'll never achieve what he would have, because you think it's better simply to ban people who test positive than to allow them to plead mitigation. Fine, if you're ok with that, i'm not.
Rovesciarete
Hall of Fame
Lizzy Banks offers an intriguing read. When anti-doping gets it wrong:
As I have written before, pharmaceutical companies often produce different medications on a single set of machines. They only have the incentive to keep cross-contamination below the regulatory norms, while keeping a margin of safety.
If doping tests are much more sensitive, you will find naturally more and more cases of 'medicament standard contamination' within athletes, which get farther and farther away from a potential performance-enhancing level.
Winner Sinner
Professional
Wada is actually arguing the opposite;
The general director of Wada Olivier Niggli, interviewed by the French newspaper L'Équipe on Swiatek and Sinner, opened a potentially very useful scenario in evaluating the blue's case. In fact, he says: "Today there is a problem of contamination. This does not mean that there are more cases of this kind than in the past, the fact is that laboratories are more efficient in detecting even infinitesimal quantities of substances." In short, technological progress paradoxically risks becoming counterproductive if certain rules are not modified by adapting them to new specificities.
But Niggli goes further: "The quantities are so small that you can get contaminated by doing harmless things. The truth is that we hear a lot of stories and I understand public opinion that can come to think that we take in everything." A lot of stories like the one that led to Sinner's positivity and which are worth remembering: the detection of Clostebol is due to the massages carried out shortly before Indian Wells by his now former physiotherapist Naldi who had previously taken Trofodermin (spray which contains the prohibited substance) purchased in Italy by the former athletic trainer Ferrara to treat a cut on the little finger of his left hand. A series of circumstances that Sinner could not have known about and, as mentioned, no one has any doubts about his good faith. The d.g. of the World Anti-Doping Agency then opens up to a solution that could prove decisive in the CAS's judgment on Jannik: "With thresholds we would not have seen all these cases. What we need to understand is whether we are ready to accept microdosing and where it is right to stop. Precisely for this type of reflection a working table will be created." A table which should therefore - in light of the analyzes of the quantities found in the cases of recent years and obviously making distinctions based on the substance - define those as the limit quantities.
UNIFORMITY'-
Having "tolerance" thresholds would also be decidedly useful to give new uniformity to cases which in the past, given similar quantities, had different outcomes. Let's start with Sinner. We still don't know the ending, but we know the quantity of Clostebol well: in the sample of March 10, 2024, 86 pg/mL of metabolites were detected, an infinitesimal quantity; in that of March 18, 76 pg/mL. Let's now take two other cases of doping for the same substance. Riccardo Moraschini, a basketball player at the time at Armani today in Cantù, tested positive in an anti-doping test carried out on 6 October 2021. Clostebol detectable due to contact with his girlfriend who used the healing spray: very low value - but higher than that of Sinner - i.e. 500 pg/ml. He renounces the counter-analysis, is heard in December and sanctioned at the beginning of January with a one-year disqualification. The National Anti-Doping Tribunal does not consider the player's act to be aimed at altering sporting performance, but confirms the disqualification because the appeal had been submitted to the wrong section. Then there is the case of Atalanta defender Palomino: on 26 July 2022 he was suspended due to the usual Clostebol positivity: 800 pg/ml. Testing positive again (on 12 August), he reiterates the thesis of accidental and involuntary intake due to contact with the dog sitter who treated his dog Lollo with the spray.
The anti-doping prosecutor asks for a 2-year ban, but on November 7 the TNA excludes the player's responsibility and acquits him. Nado Italia appeals to the CAS but also in Lausanne they agree with Palomino. The last case of very low values is that of Iga Swiatek: less than 50 pg/ml of Trimetazidine detected. At the moment he has agreed to a suspension for one month. Thresholds would solve everything.
The general director of Wada Olivier Niggli, interviewed by the French newspaper L'Équipe on Swiatek and Sinner, opened a potentially very useful scenario in evaluating the blue's case. In fact, he says: "Today there is a problem of contamination. This does not mean that there are more cases of this kind than in the past, the fact is that laboratories are more efficient in detecting even infinitesimal quantities of substances." In short, technological progress paradoxically risks becoming counterproductive if certain rules are not modified by adapting them to new specificities.
But Niggli goes further: "The quantities are so small that you can get contaminated by doing harmless things. The truth is that we hear a lot of stories and I understand public opinion that can come to think that we take in everything." A lot of stories like the one that led to Sinner's positivity and which are worth remembering: the detection of Clostebol is due to the massages carried out shortly before Indian Wells by his now former physiotherapist Naldi who had previously taken Trofodermin (spray which contains the prohibited substance) purchased in Italy by the former athletic trainer Ferrara to treat a cut on the little finger of his left hand. A series of circumstances that Sinner could not have known about and, as mentioned, no one has any doubts about his good faith. The d.g. of the World Anti-Doping Agency then opens up to a solution that could prove decisive in the CAS's judgment on Jannik: "With thresholds we would not have seen all these cases. What we need to understand is whether we are ready to accept microdosing and where it is right to stop. Precisely for this type of reflection a working table will be created." A table which should therefore - in light of the analyzes of the quantities found in the cases of recent years and obviously making distinctions based on the substance - define those as the limit quantities.
UNIFORMITY'-
Having "tolerance" thresholds would also be decidedly useful to give new uniformity to cases which in the past, given similar quantities, had different outcomes. Let's start with Sinner. We still don't know the ending, but we know the quantity of Clostebol well: in the sample of March 10, 2024, 86 pg/mL of metabolites were detected, an infinitesimal quantity; in that of March 18, 76 pg/mL. Let's now take two other cases of doping for the same substance. Riccardo Moraschini, a basketball player at the time at Armani today in Cantù, tested positive in an anti-doping test carried out on 6 October 2021. Clostebol detectable due to contact with his girlfriend who used the healing spray: very low value - but higher than that of Sinner - i.e. 500 pg/ml. He renounces the counter-analysis, is heard in December and sanctioned at the beginning of January with a one-year disqualification. The National Anti-Doping Tribunal does not consider the player's act to be aimed at altering sporting performance, but confirms the disqualification because the appeal had been submitted to the wrong section. Then there is the case of Atalanta defender Palomino: on 26 July 2022 he was suspended due to the usual Clostebol positivity: 800 pg/ml. Testing positive again (on 12 August), he reiterates the thesis of accidental and involuntary intake due to contact with the dog sitter who treated his dog Lollo with the spray.
The anti-doping prosecutor asks for a 2-year ban, but on November 7 the TNA excludes the player's responsibility and acquits him. Nado Italia appeals to the CAS but also in Lausanne they agree with Palomino. The last case of very low values is that of Iga Swiatek: less than 50 pg/ml of Trimetazidine detected. At the moment he has agreed to a suspension for one month. Thresholds would solve everything.
RSJfan
Professional
Quite reasonable and it follows that in addition to a coach, assistant coach, mentor, physio, fitness specialist, strength and conditioning coach, consultant, chiropractor, nutritionist, manager, agent, sponsor reps, family members and sometimes personal friends each player should be expected to include in their entourage a team of scientists (with appropriate equipment) competent to do real time testing of everything the player may potentially come in contact with or ingest in order to make sure a player complies with the anti-doping program.
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gamelovergold
Rookie
To save one (fedrer or anyone you may like) you want to let go 10 guilty free when that 10 are direct competion of same innocent player and you are assuming that some divine help will come for that one innocent person and he will be able to overcome 10 doped players.
And do you think that player who takes PED will not produce false stories to save himself.
Your idea looks very good on moral grounds but see the reality . Each and every player should be made known that it is his responsibility to remain free from unwanted substance. And what kind of logic you are giving that player and his whole team are unaware of banned substances when every information is at your finger tips.
LOBALOT
Legend
All players have a list of what they can and cannot take. Players know already what they can and cannot take. 99.9% of the players don't test positive because of this. It is those that cheat are the ones that end up with + results.
Your excuse of accidental taking of an item doesn't hold water which is why it should not be part of the decision making process.
