Oliver Niggli, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), believes Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek may be victims of improved technology following their positive drug tests.
Sinner submitted two positive tests for clostebol, a banned substance, earlier this year but was cleared of any wrongdoing. An independent tribunal found the positive tests were the result of contamination from his physio at the time.
Earlier this week, another doping saga erupted when Swiatek was handed a one-month ban after providing a sample which contained trimetazidine in an out-of-competition test in August.
WADA have appealed the decision to clear Sinner, calling for the Italian to be handed a suspension of up to two years. They could still do the same with Swiatek, but Niggli believes other factors might be at play.
Speaking to L’Equipe, he suggested the increased number of high-profile cases may be down to improvements in testing, as opposed to a major doping problem within the sport.
“Today, there is a problem of contamination,” said Niggli. “There are no more [doping cases] than before, but laboratories are more efficient in detecting infinitesimal quantities of doping substances.
“We will have to open a working table to understand how to manage this situation. The quantities found are so small that it is possible to become contaminated by doing even trivial things.
“I understand the public, who thinks we are naive and that we believe everything, but the reality is different. There is a problem. If we wanted to simplify our lives, we could impose new thresholds and not find all these cases.
“The real question is: Are we ready to accept microdosing? Where do we stop? With thresholds, we wouldn’t have seen all these cases.
“What we need to understand is whether we are ready to accept microdosing and where it is right to stop. A working table will be created precisely for this type of reflection.”
Conor Niland, the Irish team captain at the Davis Cup, recently echoed Niggli’s view by suggesting that tiny levels of banned substances do not necessarily mean that an athlete has cheated.
“I think we should look at a threshold for a banned substance,” he told Tennis365. “If it’s less than a billionth of a gram, for me that’s nothing.
“It gets to the point where you could be walking down the street and someone brushes off you and you could be contaminated. If this is the amount we are talking about here, this is not something that should tarnish someone’s legacy and the achievements of their career.”
