ATP boss trashes conspiracy theories on Sinner case

ATP head Andrea Gaudenzi emphasised there is no skullduggery involved as his Italian compatriot Jannik Sinner fights off a legal challenge to a pair of 2024 doping tests.

World No. 1 Sinner has a case at Lausanne’s Court for the Arbitration of Sport to deal with next month – after the Australian Open which begins on Sunday.

Sinner’s legal team will deal with a challenge from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which objected to his exoneration without fault afte testing positive last spring for an anabolic steroid.

When the case first arose, the 23-year-old explained that the substance got into his system after his trainer used it to heal a cut on his own finger before giving the player a massage.

The exoneration by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (IATA) did not sit well with WADA, which wants a ban of up to two years for the sport’s current top player.

Gaudenzi insists there is nothing amiss while mouthy critics including longtime tennis outlier Nick Kyrgios have shouted foul.

Speculation around the tennis world,  however, suggests the common link in that particular one-sided slagging match is a common link between the two players – WTA player Anna Kalinskaya, former squeeze of Kyrgios and reportedly currently with Sinner.

“I genuinely believe there has been a lot of misinformation out there, which is unfortunate,’ Gaudenzi told Australia’s AAP.

“I am 100 per cent sure that there has not been any preferential treatment. The process has been run by the book and according to the rules, by the ITIA.

“I’m extremely pleased that the ITIA is now in place, which wasn’t the case, for example, in the ’90s when I was playing. It was the responsibility of the ATP or the WTA to manage the tennis anti-doping program.”

Gaudenzi, who won three ATP titles on clay from 1998 to 2001, added:

“It’s a very popular thing to say – he’s No.1 in the world, obviously he’s Italian and I’m Italian..

“People sometimes confuse the outcome of a specific case versus the process. I think that’s where the problem is.

“The process is identical – he hasn’t been treated differently. But every case is different, every circumstance is different.”