Iga Swiatek says the people evaluating her doping case have been treating her “like a liar”. She can’t get that out of her mind ahead of the Australian Open.
In August 2024, the current world No. 2 tested positive for a banned drug called trimetazidine, and it resulted in a one-month suspension that she served in November and December. Now that Swiatek is back on the WTA Tour, she may compete in the Australian Open, which she has yet to win.
Swiatek shared her thoughts about the doping case on the Tennis Insider Club podcast and stated: “It was terrible…Honestly, I don’t love tennis that much to feel this bad. If it [were to] happen to me a second time, I don’t know if I would be able to go through this a second time because it was terrible, honestly.”
She added: “I couldn’t go on court for two weeks because I felt it was because of tennis that I am in this place. I felt it hit me much deeper than… my ‘athlete’ side. It hit my personal side because I thought everybody would turn their backs on me.”
According to the ITIA’s statement, Swiatek’s positive test resulted from “the contamination of a regulated non-prescription medication (melatonin)”, which she claimed she took to treat her jet lags and sleep concerns.
The athlete remarked: “I had no idea what happened… We had to send supplements to the labs and wait for the results. It was so chaotic, I didn’t know if it was going to be two years or three months or something else.”
“It was really tough. I don’t want to go through this again,” she said.
Swiatek: “You literally have no control over this”
The four-time French Open champion lamented that the people prosecuting her were treating her “like a liar”.
“You can be at peace with yourself that you didn’t do anything wrong, but no one actually treats you like that, especially the people that are prosecuting you… They want to find that even when you are telling the truth you feel like they treat you like a liar,” Swiatek said.
“But it’s the law and at the beginning it was hard for me to accept it, but my team told me from the beginning, ‘Don’t expect anything and don’t overthink what the outcome might be, because you literally have no control over this’.
“We just tried to find the source [of the contamination] and we found it, but it wasn’t that obvious. When we had it, we just went through it step by step, proving my innocence and, luckily, they made a pretty rational decision,” she added.
Swiatek began the new year by leading Poland to the United Cup final in Perth, where they faced the USA. In the lead-up, she defeated world No. 6 Elena Rybakina and Katie Boulter of Great Britain, losing one set against Boulter. In her last rubber, she was defeated by Coco Gauff.
Source: Eurosport