2026-06-27 09:33:03

Marketa Vondrousova believes her tennis ban is “career-ending”.

The 2023 Wimbledon champion was handed a four-year ban this week after allegedly refusing to take a drugs test in December and she admitted the decision has left her “completely broken”, having felt hopeful the panel would dismiss the charge against her.

She told The Times newspaper: “I immediately started to cry. Like, what the hell? How can the this be? It’s like you have no power over anything. I told the truth, but one side of the story was heard and it’s not mine.

“For me, it’s career-ending. I’m 27 [this week]. It’s not like you are 19 or whatever. Overall, four years, it’s the craziest thing.

“Even with the facts and the things we know, it was even more hard because I spent the whole day at the tribunal, I saw everything, I heard everything. We have so many points we can show and know the truth. Four years, nobody could imagine it.”

The sportswoman has disputed the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s (ITIA) version of events and claimed the official who visited her home – where she was alone and “scared”, suffering from stress and anxiety – never showed official ID when asking her to do the test.

She said: “I had a sleeping problem before all of this happened.

“In September [two months before the official visited], somebody rang the doorbell at 10pm ,I was alone and I texted my boyfriend like, ‘Hey, I’m scared’, and he was like, ‘Lock yourself in a bedroom. I’m going to be there in like two hours’, so it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.”

Marketa called her agent, who tried to contact the WTA to establish if the test request was legitimate, and the officer continued to ring the door bell.

She continued: “I felt really under pressure and I just panicked.

“I decided to go down and check the situation and when I came down in the elevator, she was standing in the middle of an open door.

“I went out and she stepped out as well. She told me, ‘You have to do the test. You have to let me in’. I was like, ‘I don’t know you, I’ve never seen you. I’m scared. I’m not going to let you in.’ 

“She told me, ‘If you sign this paper, I’ll be going.’ I signed and she said, ‘I don’t think it’s good for you’, and she left. That was basically the whole thing. We were down there for ten minutes I would say.”

n a statement to The Times, the ITIA said: “We believe everyone in tennis wants a clean sport. We know testing can be challenging for players and we work hard to provide information, education and support to help them make the right decisions.

“In this specific case, there are clear rules and we were left with no choice but to charge the player after she refused a test. An independent tribunal considered the evidence and decided that the player ‘refused to submit to sample collection . . . after notification by a duly authorised person, with no compelling justification’.

“The panel decided the sanction based on the rules which set out that four years is the starting point for refusing a test.

“No one at the ITIA takes any joy from this case or the decision. We urge players to talk to us if they have questions or concerns about any aspect of the anti-doping rules.”

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