The battle that will likely determine whether Simona Halep, a former world No 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion, will ever play another competitive tennis match is underway. 

Halep’s legal team, led by Howard Jacobs, the Los Angeles lawyer who has represented some of the biggest names in sports in anti-doping litigation, has filed her notice appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Their legal briefs are due within days, after which the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), which oversees the anti-doping program in professional tennis, will have about a month to respond. The court will then set a hearing date for the coming months.

Last month, an independent panel issued a four-year suspension to Halep, 32, finding her guilty of two separate breaches of the sport’s anti-doping rules, including intentionally taking a performance-enhancing drug, following a failed urine test at the U.S. Open in 2022.

Halep tested positive for Roxadustat, commonly used for people suffering from anemia, a condition resulting from a low level of red blood cells. Roxadustat stimulates hemoglobin and red blood cell production, which allows for more endurance. The drug does this by getting the body to produce more of erythropoietin, a hormone commonly referred to as “EPO”, which plays an important role in producing red blood cells. Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body, which has long made EPO a particularly common performance-enhancing substance in professional cycling.

We will continue to fight for a just result for Simona Halep, and look forward to presenting her case at CAS https://t.co/S0ReCotXTL

— Law Offices of Howard L. Jacobs (@athleteslawyer) September 12, 2023

In addition, doping enforcement officials successfully argued that one of Halep’s blood tests showed irregular fluctuations in her hemoglobin levels, which they said suggested she had likely used banned substances during the 2022 season.

Other than acknowledging that she accidentally took Roxadustat when she tried a new nutritional supplement before the 2022 U.S. Open, Halep has maintained her innocence, especially regarding intentional doping. A provisional suspension kept her off the tour beginning last October, until a panel of arbitrators handed down the four-year suspension last month. Her case has become both a cautionary tale and a rallying cry for players who have complained about the drawn-out process and the possible end of a career for a player that few suspected of cheating.

Halep has done some traveling in recent months but has spent a lot of time at home in Bucharest, where she is something of a hero; support for her among the general public is strong where her old friends and family live. In an interview earlier this month, Halep recalled driving home in Bucharest to be with her family on the September day the decision came out, and the shock she experienced when she learned she was being suspended for four years for intentional doping.

It was an emotional day, filled with tears and an inability to understand how she could have been found guilty of blood doping even though illegal substances were never found in her blood. Before that day and since, she has received support in private and in public from players, both past and present, which has helped.

Still, the case occupies Halep’s mind from the moment she wakes until the end of the night, and she has struggled with sleep. Sometimes a jog or a walk in the woods serves as a temporary salve. Sometimes it’s just spending time with her family.  

I’ve been provisionally suspended for 8 months even though I’ve sent all the evidence regarding my contamination to the ITF last December. I don’t ask for any special treatment, but to be able to get judged by the Tribunal. I feel it is unfair. How long is it going to last? pic.twitter.com/ZwcMzXKnd0

— Simona Halep (@Simona_Halep) April 27, 2023

Halep’s case, which began more than a year ago, has loomed over tennis since news of her failed drug test first broke.

Players, even those who fervently support regular drug testing, a stringent anti-doping policy and have not questioned the ruling, are equal parts haunted, confused and angered by how long it took to adjudicate.

Tennis officials defer to the scientists.

Fans wonder what happened to a player who has been a mainstay of the tour’s top echelon for the last decade.

Here are some answers based on interviews with people involved and those with knowledge of the case.

Why did Halep get suspended?

In late August of last year, Halep’s urine tested positive for low levels of Roxadustat, which is on the list of banned substances. A month later, a blood test showed what experts determined were signs of an unnatural fluctuation in her levels of hemoglobin and immature red blood cells called ‘reticulocytes’. That eventually led to a second charge — and conviction — for intentional blood doping, which carries a nearly automatic four-year ban.

Romanian tennis player Simona Halep has been suspended for a period of four years following breaches of the Tennis Anti-Doping Program.https://t.co/dO3PdIruyF pic.twitter.com/cLRU7EhkjY

— International Tennis Integrity Agency (@itia_tennis) September 12, 2023

Does Halep have a history of doping? 

No. She has taken 56 blood tests and plenty of urine tests during her career. She has been an outspoken supporter of strict doping policies and complained years ago when Maria Sharapova was seeking wild card entries into tournaments following her drug suspension. 

Does she have a defence? 

Halep said she accidentally ingested the Roxadustat when she switched to a supplement, Keto MCT, that was contaminated with the drug. The scientists working with her lawyer on her case tested the batch of the supplement and found trace amounts of Roxadustat, even though it is not listed on the ingredients. 

Her team of experts will also assert once again that her previous blood tests show the fluctuations in her levels of hemoglobin were normal for her —within the range of previous fluctuations. Also, at the time of the suspicious blood test, Halep had already ended her season to have nasal surgery and was unable to train for several months. Her lawyers have argued the surgery, which occurred 11 days before the test, the sudden end to her intense fitness and competition regimen and a heavy menstrual cycle beforehand could have caused the fluctuations that the anti-doping scientists deemed unnatural. 

Finally, they argue that however one interprets the hemoglobin levels in her blood, why would she possibly be blood doping when she can’t compete or train? She had a blood test on August 26, 2022, that did not trigger a violation. Then she lost in the first round of the U.S. Open three days later, and she wasn’t planning to play or train again for months. That does not create the kind of logical doping scenario that anti-doping officials are supposed to deliver along with test results that can be subjectively analyzed.

What did the ITIA argue?

Scientists said they could not find the Roxadustat in the samples of the supposedly contaminated supplement Halep’s team provided. However, they used a different technique to search for it. The panel that handed down Halep’s punishment essentially accepted that the supplement was contaminated. 

However, Daniel Eichner, the president of the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Lab, who was the lead expert in the case for the ITIA, successfully argued the amount of Roxadustat found in the contaminated batch of the supplement was not enough to produce the amount that was found in her urine. So there must be another source that Halep intentionally took that produced the elevated level. 

What are Halep’s possible lines of attack in her appeal? 

ITIA experts claimed Halep was likely doping before Grand Slam tournaments throughout 2022. However, the hard evidence for that may not prove so strong. Her blood was not tested from April 27, 2022, to August 26, 2022. The French Open takes place in May and June, Wimbledon in June and July, and the August 26 test, three days before the U.S. Open, did not reveal anything suspicious.  

Also, while the ITIA argued that the contaminated supplement did not include enough Roxadustat to account for the estimated level of the drug in Halep’s urine on August 29, 2022, that argument presupposes that the amount of Roxadustat in the contaminated supplement was uniform. Halep’s team argued it was an unfair supposition and the presence of any Roxadustat in the supplement could explain how enough of it got into her system to result in a positive test. 

The ITIA also convinced the arbitration panel that there must have been another source of Roxadustat that Halep took intentionally. That conclusion demands acceptance of a significant coincidence: that the performance-enhancing drug she was using just happened to also be present in a contaminated batch of a supplement she had just started taking days before failing a drug test, or that the supplement was some kind of tool to cover up other Roxadustat use. 

Could her sentence be reduced? 

Possibly.

Reductions in suspensions do occur at CAS, where the appeal is essentially a do-over, possibly with some new evidence. Tennis players have had their suspension reduced in the past. Russia’s Maria Sharapova originally received a two-year sentence for taking a heart medicine that was on the banned list without a therapeutic use exemption. The court reduced it to 15 months. Marin Cilic of Croatia was suspended for nine months for taking an illegal stimulant but CAS deemed the penalty too severe and shortened it to four months.

If Halep can merely convince the panel her positive drug test was the result of unintentional doping rather than intentional doping, it’s likely she would receive a suspension of two years or less, and she has already been sidelined for more than a year.

(Top photo: Diego Souto/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)