Caroline Wozniacki believes that players coming back from drugs bans should not receive wild cards, prompting the returning Simona Halep to irritably insist that she is not a doping cheat.
Halep, the 2019 Wimbledon champion and former world No 1, played her first match back at the Miami Open on Tuesday since her suspension was reduced from four years to nine months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The 32-year-old from Romania made a strong start before fading physically in a 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 defeat by Spain’s Paula Badosa.
As she had lost her world ranking through her period of inactivity, Halep required a wild-card invitation from organisers to compete in this WTA 1000 tournament. This is a contentious issue given that she was not fully cleared by CAS, which accepted her argument that a contaminated supplement was to blame for a failed test at the 2022 US Open but still ruled that a sanction of nine months was adequate.
This is reminiscent of the controversy when Maria Sharapova received several wild cards upon her return from a 15-month drugs ban in 2017. Wozniacki criticised this easy route back onto the tour then, and stood by her stance on Tuesday when she was asked for her thoughts on Halep’s return.
“I’ve always liked Simona,” Wozniacki, the 2018 Australian Open champion and former world No 1 from Denmark, said. “We’ve always had a good relationship. I’ve been very outspoken in the past how I feel about doping and all of that. I think my view on doping is the same. I have always wanted a clean sport, fair for everybody.
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“This is not directly at Simona, but if someone purposely cheats, if someone has tested positive for doping . . . I understand why a tournament wants a big star in the tournament, but it’s my personal belief that I don’t think people should be awarded wild cards afterwards. If you want to come back and it’s been a mistake, I understand, but you should work your way up from the bottom.
“Simona’s situation has obviously dragged on for a long time. She got her suspension reduced. It wasn’t a clearance, it was a reduced sentence. She’s now been out of the game for a while and she’s coming back.
“Again, I just hope for a clean sport. That’s all I want. I want to have good role models for the young generation. It’s a sport that has a lot of money in it, a lot of competitiveness, a lot of competitors. I want a fair fight.”
Halep was among several players who were critical of the wild cards that Sharapova received. Similar to this case, CAS had also ruled that Sharapova was not considered to be an “intentional doper” because of a mix-up over the addition of Meldonium to the list of banned sbstances.
“For the kids, for the young players, it is not OK to help with a wild card the player that was banned for doping,” Halep said in 2017, adding that: “It is not about Maria Sharapova here, but it is about all the players that are found doped.”
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But she was clearly riled when Wozniacki’s comments were put to her. She pointed to the ruling by CAS that her anti-doping rule violation was “not intentional”.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Halep said. “I didn’t cheat, I didn’t dope, so it’s better if we read the decision from CAS that it was a contaminated supplement, it wasn’t doping.
“Thank you to the tournament for giving me the wild card and the possibility to play in such a big tournament. It was great to be back. Only one person being negative about me is not that important because I have hundreds of people giving me love, so I will take that.”
Halep will almost certainly receive more wild cards during the upcoming European clay-court swing, giving her the opportunity to improve her world ranking and earn a place in the French Open and Wimbledon by right. However, as time is tight, it is possible that she will have to go through qualifying for these grand-slam tournaments as it will be a tall order to reach the top 100 by the entry list deadlines.
