Former world No 1 Simona Halep has defended herself after being handed a four-year ban from tennis for two intentional breaches of anti-doping rules, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) said. Halep, who won the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon a year later, tested positive for the prohibited substance roxadustat at the US Open in 2022 and was also subsequently found to have irregularities in her athlete biological passport following the analysis of 51 blood samples. “I’m shocked,” she said. “I hope the truth will come out one day and I will fight to the end to prove it.”
