Jannik Sinner should feel fortunate not to have been held responsible for positive doping tests

⬆️ WATCH: Jannik Sinner tests positive for banned substance, but won't be suspended | Tennis Channel Live ⬆️

Jannik Sinner isn’t known for wild celebrations or overt displays of emotion. But his reaction to winning the Cincinnati Open on Monday was surprisingly understated, even for him. He lifted his arms above his head, and then brought them down again, all while barely cracking a smile. Later, Prakash Amritraj, interviewing the Italian on Tennis Channel, noted Sinner’s relatively somber demeanor and encouraged him to loosen up and enjoy the moment.

Were Sinner’s emotions secretly mixed? Was the ATP’s No. 1 player thinking about how the happy news of his victory would soon be buried by the bombshell news of his positive doping tests from the spring?

The world got that news from the player’s X account on Tuesday morning, in a statement entitled, “Jannik Sinner cleared of any wrongdoing by Independent Tribunal.”

Sinner was notified in April that during Indian Wells, on March 8 and 10, he tested positive twice for traces amounts of Clostebol, a banned substance used to promote muscle growth and increase physical performance.

Sinner’s explanation goes like this:

In February, his fitness coach, Umberto Ferrara, bought an over-the-counter medical spray in Italy called Trofodermin, which is applied to cuts, and which contains Clostebol.

At Indian Wells the next month, Sinner’s physio, Giacomo Naldi, cut his left pinky on a scalpel while reaching into his training bag. Naldi put a bandage on it, and on March 3 gave Sinner a massage. He told Sinner he had cut himself; Sinner asked if he had taken anything for it, and Naldi said no. Two days later, Ferrera recommended that Naldi use the Trofodermin on his cut; according to Ferrera, he also warned Naldi that it contained a banned substance.

From March 5th to the 13th, Naldi applied the Trofodermin to his finger each day, while also giving Sinner full-body massages, without gloves, and at times without washing his hands. Sinner had small cuts on his back and feet, which is where the Clostebol ostensibly seeped in.

The amount was small—“less than a billionth of a gram,” according to Sinner’s statement—and according to experts consulted by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), the chain of events that Sinner’s team laid out was deemed plausible and consistent with the amount detected. While every player is responsible for what enters his body, as well as for the actions of his or her support team, an independent tribunal ruled that Sinner bore “No Fault” and “No Negligence” for what happened, and cleared him of any punishment. (Read the ITIA’s full decision.)

This is a lot to take in about the world’s No. 1 male tennis player, a day after his win in Cincy, and a few days before he starts his US Open campaign. For now, here are a few first-day thoughts on the decision.

• The suspension for intentionally ingesting a banned substance is four years. The ITIA seemed to have little trouble dismissing that possibility, in part because the amount detected was, according to one expert witness, too small to be performance-enhancing.
• The suspension for unintentionally ingesting is two years. That was a much tougher call, and the tribunal spends the bulk of its time explaining how it dismissed that punishment as well. Athletes are responsible for the actions of those around them, and have a duty to use “utmost caution” to avoid ingesting banned substances.
• The judges decided that Sinner had done everything required of him. He had hired a qualified trainer and physio. He had asked his physio, when he saw his hand bandaged, if he had used anything on it. He hadn’t known that the physio subsequently began to put Trofodermin on the cut. Ultimately, the tribunal decided that Sinner had no knowledge that Ferrera had the spray with him in Indian Wells; that the spray contained a banned substance; or that Naldi used it on his finger.

The ITIA’s tribunal ultimately determined that Sinner was too far removed from the Clostebol in his camp to be punished for having it in his system. In their eyes, he hired the right people, and the right people messed up.

What are the question marks surrounding the case?

• Sinner was only provisionally suspended for a total of five days, on two occasions, and the failed tests were kept secret until today. As one fellow player has pointed out, that’s an extremely short amount of time for a suspension. Simona Halep, by comparison, was provisionally banned for a year before a decision on her case was made. Halep did have a higher amount of banned substance detected, and was also charged with irregularities in her biological passport, but the consensus was that the process took far too long in her case.
• There was a discrepancy in the testimony of Ferrara the fitness trainer and Naldi the physio. Ferrara said he told Naldi that Trofodermin contains a banned substance, and that it should be kept away from Sinner. Naldi says he doesn’t recall that conversation. Trofodermin’s packaging comes with a warning that it contains a doping agent, but that packaging had apparently been removed by the time Naldi saw it.
• Positive tests for Clostebol are rampant in Italian sports. In 2020, WADA looked at the high number of failed tests for Clostebol in the country, and how they relate to the use of Trofodermin there. This May, Edmund Willison, who writes the doping-focused Substack Honest Sport, published a post entitled, “Italy’s Clostebol crisis across tennis, football, and the Olympics.”

As Willison points out, Italy is one of the few countries where a substance—Trofodermin—containing Clostebol is commonly sold, which makes accidental use more likely. At the same time, as noted above, the spray is sold in a package that warns the buyer that it contains a doping agent. According to Willison, this “would seemingly make any argument of inadvertent use untenable.”

The ITIA’s tribunal ultimately determined that Sinner was too far removed from the Clostebol in his camp to be punished for having it in his system. In their eyes, he hired the right people, and the right people messed up. How could Ferrara have let Trofodermin anywhere near Sinner, and how could Naldi have applied the substance to his finger, and then given Sinner a massage without washing his hands? Sinner has, presumably, asked them those questions.

The judges seemed to rely heavily on evidence, and their sense that Sinner takes his anti-doping responsibilities seriously. Another set of judges could conceivably have gone a different way and decided that, even if Sinner had no knowledge of the substance’s existence, he was responsible for everyone’s actions in his camp.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Sinner had all of this weighing on his mind during his victory celebrations in Cincinnati on Monday. He may have been thinking about how fortunate he was to be playing at all.