Why There Will Be No More Sinner Cases: Wada Changes Anti-Doping Rules

Rome, 10 December 2024 – Following the words of the Director General of the Wada, Olivier Niggli, “the cases of contamination They are everywhere. We could have we created the problem because laboratories detect infinitesimal quantities”, the World Anti-Doping Agency has decided to amend the regulation from 1 January 2027. The new features of the Code concern in particular any contamination and concentration levels of prohibited substances.

Jannik Sinner is awaiting the CAS judgment for the Clostebol case

The events of Sinner e swiatek have left their mark, so here is a revolution for the anti-doping system. The blue number 1 in world tennis awaits the judgment of the CAS (no earlier than February 2025) after the clostebol case, while the Polish one has settled the accounts with one month's suspension. The changes introduced by Wada – no changes are foreseen retroactivity – will not directly impact the Sinner's legal case, but in theory they could lend a hand in the defense of the Italian champion, considering the direction taken by the World Agency.

From 1 January 2027, therefore, there will no longer be any talk of “contaminated product” But say “source of contamination”, defined by Wada experts as "a unpredictable source of a prohibited substance such as ingestion of a medicine containing the prohibited substance which it is not specified on the label or whose presence cannot be identified by a reasonable Internet search; consumption of food or drink, such as contaminated meat or water, which contains the prohibited substance without there being a warning or other communication notifying of the possible presence of the prohibited substance; exposure to the prohibited substance which had been used or possessed by a third person, both through direct contact with the athlete with the third person or through contact with objects touched or handled by the third person; or through environmental contamination”. It was precisely this last case that got Sinner into trouble.

The other substantial novelty is linked to the minimum concentration levels of prohibited substances without a threshold – specifically a substance for which there is no threshold within which its presence is tolerated in the athlete's body – under which positivity is not configured. In Sinner, it is recalled, infinitesimal quantities of clostebol were found: 86 picograms per milliliter in the test of March 10, 2024, as many as 76 in the one carried out just over a week later.