Is Vondrousova’s Ban Too Long? | Gill Gross

**Gill Gross** (0:01)
Marketa Vondrousova handed a four-year ban for refusing a random drug test. If you are confused by this, I hope by the end, you will no longer be. And of course, I will offer my perspective and opinion on whether or not the system worked properly and fairly in this instance. A story that will for sure have a second leg to it, as Vondrousova will most definitely appeal to the CAS, where another, a separate tribunal, will rule on this case, either uphold or shorten what is right now a maximum suspension of four years. Let me start there.
This is something that I stated in my coverage of the Halep case, so it is nothing new, but I feel that four years is overly punitive in all cases. All cases. So that's just my opinion about the severity of the maximum suspension. Four years is not a random number pulled out of a hat. That is the number under WADA code. If you are found to have intentionally taken performance enhancing drugs with no good reason, intentional no good reason, those two are the same. But four years is the max. I don't think it needs to go that far in order to be a deterrent. I think if the maximum ban for doping was, say, two years, and you throw in the reputational damage, you throw in the financial cost of potentially losing sponsorships for maybe the rest of your career, if you have that stain on your name, I think that is punishment enough to deter players from taking performance enhancing drugs. What obviously you don't want is a punishment so soft that players feel like it's worth it, that it's worth the risk. That's what you don't want. In my view, four years is overkill. You don't need it to be that long. Now, Wada Code is not catered to tennis. Wada Code is an overarching organization that oversees all of sport. Although, if you are an individual league, you can choose to operate independent of Wada and Wada Code. That way, in that case, and this is what the American sports leagues do, now you have to create your own anti-doping mechanism, which is costly. Certainly, very expensive. Tennis does not do that. It would be hard for tennis to do that because of all of the fragmentation. Tennis is under Wada Code. Wada Code dictates that the max ban for intentional doping is four years. And they probably came to that number. Why four? That's one Olympic cycle. So that may be viewed as, and I think this makes sense, if you are a cross-country skier, then four years seems like an appropriate length of time for intentional doping. You have to miss one Olympics as a cross-country skier if you are found to have intentionally taken performance-enhancing drugs. That makes sense. But in tennis, it just feels like too much. So I want to start there. But now you get to the second part of this, which is that the WADA code and the ITIA, and I can say the ITIA because they've produced quotes backing this up and supporting it.
The view is that the punishment for refusing a drug test must be equal to the punishment of failing a drug test.
Because if it's not equal, then somebody who has intentionally doped in that moment, will always choose to refuse the test because that is a way to skirt out of the punishment that they deserve.
You cannot have a system in which you can skirt out of the testing mechanism in order to receive a softer penalty.
That to me makes sense. So I think the four years, I don't like that within Wadakode, four tennis, four tennis, I think that's overkill. But the idea that refusal without a compelling reason is equal to intentional doping, that actually does make sense to me. That I feel like is fair.
Now, keep in mind if you treat a refusal of a refusal of test the same as a positive test, now you go to the next phase, which is in the case of a positive test, you are trying to prove why this positive test was not intentional doping. And for Egos Fiontek, it was, my melatonin was contaminated. And then she proved that with unopened samples. For Yannick Sinner, it was, my trainer was using Clostobol spray, on a cut on his finger, and then massaged me.
If you refuse a test, you're in a very tricky situation because you cannot go into contamination. You cannot go into these things that you cannot say, Richard Gassquet, I kissed a woman in the club and that woman was taking cocaine. You've refused a test. You don't have that evidence. Like part of the reason, like part of the key thing for those who get the four year ban reduced is often the amount in system. Is the amount in system congruent with a contamination or is it congruent with performance enhancing? If you refuse a test, there is no amount in system. It's just, you almost have to go to the worst. So there's very little in that case where Vondrousova can go. However, she does have a defense and she made that defense in front of the independent tribunal and she made that defense publicly. Vondrousova said that she had a reaction, a psychological reaction to the stress and the panic of this particular visitation from the doping control officer. As a result of that stress reaction, she could not take the test. Vondrousova claims that there were certain ways the doping control officer went about her business that left Marketa afraid, scared, and kind of led to that stress reaction. There are a lot of regulations in place as WADA recognizes the risk for this. When you are going to send strangers to athletes' houses, you could understand why that could get into some shaky territory sometimes. So, one of the notice I referred to the doping control officer as her, female, because one of the regulations they have in place is the control officer will always match the gender of the athlete. That is an example of really sensible policy that is designed to avoid somebody feeling unsafe in these interactions.