Belgian tennis star Yanina Wickmayer held a press conference in Brussels on Thursday in response to her recent suspension from tennis.
After providing a timeline of events leading up to the ITF’s decision to ban her from the sport, Wickmayer announced her decision to appeal.
Wickmayer’s saga of unsuccessfully contacting anti-doping officials began in November 2008 while she was training in Switzerland, followed by her stint in Australia in January.
“Because of this, all of the letters that were sent to my house that had to be signed for, I was unable to receive and were returned to sender,” Wickmayer said.
On February 18, 2009, Wickmayer used the search engine Google to find the email contact information for the anti-doping agency.
“On February 19, 2009, I received an email back, which included a login and did not
include any information about the one failed update I had already missed, without
knowing that this system even exists, even though all the letters that I had to sign for upon receipt and were sent back to the Flemish Anti-Doping Agency, meaning that they did know that I never received them,” Wickmayer said.
“After this email, I left for the United States for 7 weeks and have tried numerous times to sign on to the system with the login details that they provided to me, which failed time after time.”
In April, Wickmayer decided to email the doping agency again after failing to access the system.
“Their reply to me was simply that there was a problem with my login and that they have reset this so I can log in with a new login into the system. There was no indication in this email that I now had already had two failures to update behind my name, even though I had not even logged into the system once,” Wickmayer added.
After the system was reset, Wickmayer was finally able to register, but mistakenly filled out the whereabouts form wrong.
“I did not know that you could not select the option ‘competition’ and instead had to select the option “permanent residence”, which I had no idea about,” Wickmayer said.
“In June, I then called Mr. De Bruyn myself to ask him information as to how top
complete the wherabouts correctly. I got the information that day for the first. This conversation took place after my 3rd missed update had already happened, even though I had not received any word about this.”
Under the International Tennis Federation rules, three missed updates can result in a one-year suspension, which was imposed upon Wickmayer on November 5, 2009.
“I am being punished extremely hard,” Wickmayer said. “I will lose my ranking and will have to start again from 0. I will fight back but there is nothing that guarantees me that I will return to the same ranking.”
Not surprisingly, Wickmayer does plan to appeal the suspension, but even if it is not overturned, she refuses to give up.
“We are going to appeal this ruling and will do everything we can to get it overturned,” Wickmayer acknowledged. “If this decision is not overturned and I am not able to compete for a year, I am going to do everything I can to be back at the end of the year even stronger. I am a fighter and won’t give up.”
Fingers crossed, I think they should take into consideration the system has apparently technical flaws and players by all means should have been warned about possible consequences of not reporting where they are.
Anyone who uses a computer knows how annoying they can be and how difficult it is, sometimes, to do the most straightforward things. Yanina has not been found to have used drugs, she just didn’t give her whereabouts so I think it’s a bit harsh to impose a year long ban. I hope she’s able to get this sorted and get back on the courts again. She’s a great player and has a bright future.
While I agree that players should be required to report their whereabouts, a one-year suspension for failing to do so is Draconian – especially as they refused to help Yanina when she couldn’t log in, and didn’t tell her that she had even one infraction until she had three.
Strict requirements demand a high level of service in return.