Billionaire businessman and former player Ion Tiriac furiously criticized the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after its case settlement with Jannik Sinner, arguing it has legalized cheating by athletes.
WADA agreed to settle Sinner’s doping case and not take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in return for the Italian serving a suspension until May 4th. This means he will miss four Masters 1000 tournaments.
The ATP world No. 1 tested positive for the banned substance clostebol at the 2024 Indian Wells Open after accidental contamination by his physiotherapist. WADA initially wanted a longer ban before radically altering course by settling the case.
Some feel Sinner received preferable treatment, with Novak Djokovic confirming that many in the locker room feel that is the case. Tiriac saved all his rage for WADA and its rules instead of Sinner.
Tiriac is angered by therapeutic use exceptions (TUE), which allows athletes to be treated for medical exemptions, even if it involves using a prohibited substance, without any risk of being sanctioned.
The Romanian businessman wrote in a letter to L’Equipe that viewers are being deceived by those who he thinks use multiple exceptions to take banned substances and that WADA has legalized cheating by allowing the TUE rule to exist.
“The day WADA accepted the first so-called ‘TUE’ exception (exemptions for therapeutic use) for an athlete to take blacklisted substances, that’s when cheating was completely legalised. The system has collapsed.”
“There are thousands of athletes, and probably hundreds in my sport, tennis, who have up to 14 or 15 exceptions and still don’t test positive. It is deceiving the sport, deceiving oneself, deceiving other competitors and deceiving the public. The game is rigged, my friends, and rigged to the core.”
Tiriac questions where sport is going and believes that the players using the TUE exemptions can have as much as a 30% advantage over their opponent, which harms the sport’s integrity and legitimacy.
“Where is sport going today? Nobody knows! If we allow these TUEs which can give a player an advantage of 10-20-30% compared to his competitor, what are the opponent’s chances? What is the reality that the viewer sees? How will the ‘clean’ player train tomorrow after his defeat to improve?”
These are serious claims by Tiriac. While TUE exemptions do exist, it is not clear that athletes using multiple exemptions to gain an advantage is a widespread issue that jeopardizes sports legitimacy.
Nonetheless, Sinner’s case will continue to be discussed and it has undoubtedly reduced trust in the system. WADA will argue that it acted within the rules created, and criticisms of its integrity are unwarranted.
However, the Professional Tennis Players Association, co-founded by Djokovic, disagrees. In a strongly worded statement reacting to Sinner’s case settlement, it explicitly argued that the system is biased in favor of certain players.
Sinner will hope there is no lingering animosity toward him when he returns. However, it seems that most of the anger has been directed at the system rather than at Sinner himself since he cannot control how the anti-doping agencies act.
