Tennis
Nadal and Medvedev were classified as women. And this is the fight against doping?
The International Tennis Federation has submitted an anti-doping document. The reliability of the data is questionable.
The fight against doping is a very routine phenomenon in modern sports. Violators are punished, while the rest a priori have the status of clean athletes. After all, if everything is fine on paper, then there can be no problems.
Another anti-doping document prepared by the International Tennis Federation was also supposed to inspire confidence in anti-doping – comprehensive data was provided for each tennis player. But is it possible to trust the information on the number and results of tests if there are a myriad of errors in the documents.
Are the Williams sisters really brothers, and Nadal and Medvedev are women?
The secret of the titled Spaniard
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has published a report that provides complete information on the testing of athletes for doping in 2021. Anyone can get acquainted with the work done – 36 pages, which indicate how many checks during the tournaments and during the out-of-competition period each of the tennis players passed.
The Swiss Roger Federer, according to the data provided, was checked three times during the competition, another 9 times he was disturbed by checks in his spare time from tournaments. Russian Andrey Rublev was tested 16 times outside of tournaments and 10 times in competition. Another of our athletes, Elizaveta Koklina, was so distrusted that doping officers visited her 35 times a year, although at the competitions the girl was not interested at all.
This information, it would seem, should not cause doubts. If a reputable body says that Spaniard Rafael Nadal has been tested twice in tournaments and 12 times out of competition, why shouldn’t we believe it? True, here the ITF notes that the titled Spaniard … is a woman!
The ladies also recorded Briton Andy Murray, German Misha Zverev and even our Daniil Medvedev. At the same time, the male sex was assigned to the Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, the Polish Iga Swiatek, the Russian Vera Zvonareva and our former athletes Arina Rodionova and Elena Rybakina. Even the tale about the “Williams brothers”, according to the ITF document, turned out to be true – the gender of Serena and Venus is marked with the letter “M”.
Struggle against prejudice or carelessness?
The ITF report with sudden data presents a difficult choice. Or you have to admit that many of the world’s tennis stars are a little different from who they pretended to be. Or you need to take into account that the organization negligently treated the preparation of the document. Single errors on 36 pages can still be explained somehow. But there are not a few of these blunders – the wrong gender is indicated for a significant part of both well-known and novice athletes.
Seriously, the gender errors in the ITF report are nothing more than the extreme carelessness and illiteracy of its compilers. But at the same time, reasonable questions arise: is the information on the number of tests still true, or did the numbers in the document also fall randomly and without any logic? If the second statement is true, then the seriousness of the approach to the testing itself may raise questions.
Is the International Tennis Federation really involved in the fight against doping, or is it just pretending to work?
Source: Sportbox
I am a sports journalist who has written for a number of Sportish. I have a background in journalism and have been writing since I was young. My main focus is sports news, but I also write about general news. I am currently working as an author at Sportish.