Simona Halep four-year tennis ban for doping reduced to nine months on appeal

Former Wimbledon champion Simona Halep has had her four-year ban for doping reduced to nine months meaning she can make an immediate return to the WTA Tour.

Halep had tested positive for the banned substance Roxadustat, which boosts the body’s red-blood cell count, in the wake of the US Open back in 2022.

She was also later found to have abnormalities in her athlete biological passport, resulting in a four-year suspension handed to her in September last year by the International Tennis Federation Independent Tribunal.

But that was slashed dramatically to just nine months following a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which sat from February 7-9 and reached its decision on Tuesday.

In its judgement, CAS said: “Having carefully considered all the evidence put before it, the CAS panel determined that Ms Halep had established, on the balance of probabilities, that the roxadustat entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement which she had used in the days shortly before 29 August 2022.

"The Roxadustat, as detected in her sample, came from that contaminated product. As a result, the CAS Panel determined that Ms Halep had also established, on the balance of probabilities, that her anti-doping rule violations were not intentional.