Simona Halep's Doping Ban Reduced, Cleared for Immediate Return to Tennis
Two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep has been cleared for an immediate return to tennis after the Court of Arbitration for Sport partially upheld her appeal and reduced her four-year ban to just nine months, which expired last July. The court accepted that a banned blood-boosting substance entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement and awarded her 20,000 Swiss francs toward her legal fees. Halep had been serving a ban since testing positive for the banned substance roxadustat at the 2022 U.S. Open and denied wrongdoing, attributing the positive test to contaminated nutritional supplements.