Former world tennis No. 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep has been suspended from the sport for four years over two alleged doping violations by the Romanian 31-year-old.
She has continued to proclaim her innocence and has vowed to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced the suspension on September 12 after a decision by an independent tribunal established by Sports Resolutions.
Halep had already been provisionally suspended from pro tennis since testing positive for roxadustat at the U.S. Open in 2022. The ITIA said Halep had given evidence personally during the tribunal's hearings in late June.
She was found to have violated the Tennis Anti-Doping Program (TADP) on two occasions in 2022.
In one case, roxadustat was detected in a urine sample collected at Flushing Meadows in New York in August 2022, where she lost in the first round.
The ITIA said blood samples the same year also detected "use of a prohibited substance or method."
"The tribunal accepted Halep’s argument that they had taken a contaminated supplement, but determined the volume the player ingested could not have resulted in the concentration of roxadustat found in the positive sample," the ITIA said.
Halep is a former Wimbledon and French Open singles champion who in 2019 became the first Romanian to attain the WTA's world No. 1 ranking.
Halep was quoted by Reuters as saying after the ITIA announcement that she "refused to accept their (ITIA) decision of a four-year ban."
"I intend to appeal this decision to The Court of Arbitration for Sport and pursue all legal remedies against the supplement company in question," it quoted her as saying.
"I am continuing to train and do everything in my power to clear my name of these false allegations and return to the court," Halep said.
The ITIA is the delegated third party, under the World Anti-Doping Code of the International Tennis Federation, the international governing body for the sport of tennis, according to its website.
The suspension is due to end in early October of 2026.