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Sport Nation
Why Jannik Sinner should never have competed at the 2025 Australian Open
Gerard Whateley • February 17th, 2025 12:30 pm
World No.1 and Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner has been banned for three months in a negotiated settlement to an anti-doping case.
I doubt I’ve ever agreed with Nick Kyrgios about anything… but when he tweeted 'Dodgy As'… well that’s about as accurate as you get.
We said this in real time - The problem with celebrating this year’s Australian Open was knowing the male champion had a WADA hearing pending for two failed doping tests.
There was this preposterous idea floated that tennis crowds were fussy about their champions given the lukewarm response to Sinner’s triumph in January.
It was tosh then… it’s rolled-gold tosh now.
Nothing undermines faith in sport so quickly as conveniently handled drug cases that appear radically inconsistent with the standard.
How many athletes have fallen on the wrong side of strict liability totally separated to the question of whether they intended to cheat or not.
We’ve been conditioned to understand and respect the convention even when it seems draconian and unjust.
Sinner was afforded a different standard… and it’s impossible to benignly accept it.
And now he’ll miss three months between the Australian Open and the French Open.
How convenient.
Sinner played at Melbourne Park under a cloud. We didn’t know how to feel about that.
We were reassured by those who claimed to know more that everything was fine, that we should harbour no suspicion.
But as it turns out his infraction is worthy of a three-month ban in one of those negotiated outcomes which never passes muster.
Sinner’s peers don’t believe in it. Close anti-doping observers are appalled by it.
And the fans are left with an inescapable suspicion.
Australian Open crowds might have been derided during this summer… but again they proved themselves both educated and canny.
There was a waft over the tournament, a stench.
And now that we know it confirmed what we suspected - it stank.
Jannik Sinner shouldn’t have been playing at Melbourne Park.
That title is a breach of faith with the sporting public.
And it's a black mark against anti-doping which has an increasingly shaky record when it comes to major sport.
