"Total lack of transparency," argues Daniel Kaplan after Marketa Vondrousova received a four year ban for her refusal to take an anti-doping test

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**SPEAKER_1** (0:56)
And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the matchday spread.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:00)
He's reaching for the buffalo wing.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:02)
Perfect. Hang on.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:04)
What's this? Oh, he's going for a can of Pepsi too.

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Incredible. What a finish.

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Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it.

**Daniel Kaplan** (1:16)
It just tastes better.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:17)
Matchdays deserve Pepsi.

**John Silk** (1:19)
Food deserves Pepsi.

**Daniel Kaplan** (1:21)
Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match.

**John Silk** (1:24)
It's poetry in motion.
So not quite breaking news. Certainly not nowadays. In the olden days, the way news would work, you'd have about 24 hours to react to this kind of thing. But nowadays, it's minutes rather than hours. But nevertheless, a few hours after the news broke that Marketa Vondrousova has been handed a four-year ban, that is for not... Make sure you correct me if I'm wrong in this wording. But basically, she didn't take the doping test when the dopers, let's say, or sorry, the doping team knocked on her door at the back end of last year, I believe it was.

**Daniel Kaplan** (2:08)
It was December, yes.

**John Silk** (2:09)
Yeah, in December. Thanks, Dan. So, yeah, I'm here with Dan.
Introduce yourself, Dan, before I misintroduce you.

**Daniel Kaplan** (2:17)
Well, my name is Dan Kaplan. I am a longtime sports business writer, and I cover tennis, the business of tennis for many years at Sports Business Journal, and then a bit at The Athletic before I left there.
But every now and then, a major doping case like this would pop up in tennis, and it's an interesting subject. But I mean, the conclusion I have is it's shocking for a four-year ban for Vondrousova. It's just shocking.

**John Silk** (2:45)
Why have you come to that sort of conclusion? Is that because you've compared it to, for example, other cases of either missed tests? There's a very famous one in football, albeit it's 20 years ago. And I do think, I don't really know in tennis or even in legal terms, how far back and whether you can, certainly you could not cite other sports, but I've seen people citing incidents 10 or 20 years ago of missed tests and misdemeanors, if you like. And I do wonder if, you know, how far back can we go? And can we just cross over to other sports like football or athletics to cite examples?

**Daniel Kaplan** (3:23)
We can. It should be noted that the Tennis Integrity Unit, I'm probably getting the full name wrong, but the unit that...

**John Silk** (3:32)
ITIA, the International Tennis Integrity Agency, yeah.

**Daniel Kaplan** (3:35)
ITIA.
This is not the first time there's been a punishment that seems extreme in tennis.
I mean, you look at Simona Halep, she ingested tainted supplements that she got from her coach. You look at Maria Sharapova way back, when she eventually got her punishment reduced. And her case, she was among the viewers, is she took something called Meldonium. And it was legal, it was approved as a supplement by the Tours. And then January 1st, I can't really remember the year, but it might have been 2015, 2016, something like that. It changed, and she continued to take it at the Australian Open. And it triggered an integrity unit punishment. But like in this case, it seemed quite extreme for, I mean, there were probably a lot of Russians who took this drug in January of that year, who didn't know it was no longer legal. Now, she did deserve punishment. You know, she's responsible for knowing what's on and off the band list. And I think in her case, the agent hadn't notified her, didn't read the communications well enough. But she got that penalty reduced. And I would imagine Vondrousova will also at the Court of Arbitration in Sports.