Jannik Sinner, the Italian world No. 1, is in the news for all the wrong reasons, one day before the final Grand Slam of the season, the US Open, which begins in New York on Monday. Sinner may have gotten off very lightly after testing positive for clostebol, an anabolic steroid, twice during the Indian Wells tournament in March 2024. What happened next has caused enormous anger among other tennis players and coaches, with the International Tennis Integrity Association (ITIA) giving him a clean bill of health.

After the outspoken Nick Kyrgios called Sinner a dopey cheater four days ago, Novak Djokovic, who dreams of winning his 25th Grand Slam title, has now joined the discussion. Kyrgios was quick to get out of the way, saying Sinner had received some sort of “preferential treatment.” Djokovic’s statement was softer, but he got to the point in true statesmanlike style. “There are a lot of problems in the system,” Djokovic said at a press conference on Saturday night. “I can understand the feelings of many players who are wondering if they are being treated equally.”

As someone who always weighs his words before speaking, Djokovic showed more class when he did not attack Sinner personally. “Hopefully the governing bodies of our sport can learn from this case and do better in the future,” he said just days after winning an elusive Olympic gold medal in Paris. “I think collectively something has to change.”

Whether Sinner is a saint is a matter of some irritation in the tennis world, as he was not even suspended when it was announced that he had tested positive for clostebol. As an Olympic sport, tennis works very hard to combat doping and athletes are trained from the junior phase of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments. When players move up to the higher classes, be it ATP or WTA tournaments, the doping controls are much stricter.

For the latest sports news: Click here

There are numerous cases where players have felt their privacy was violated due to anti-doping policies. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has even knocked on players’ hotel room doors at 5am to do a urine test. Serena Williams and Mahesh Bhupathi have also spoken in the past about losing sleep late at night after a match because the doorbell rang and they had to do a “pee test”.

If these are the anti-doping measures for top stars, why was Sinner treated differently? After his triumph at the Australian Open in January, he was doing well and was hyped. What happened in Indian Wells in March is now well known: Giacomo Naldi, his physiotherapist, treated him with an over-the-counter spray. Fitness coach Umberto Ferrara had apparently bought the spray in a shop and “did not read the package insert”.

The intrigue does not end there. Naldi had a cut on his finger and when he used the spray on Sinner, the clostebol got into his body. How this happened is also a mystery, as Sinner suffers from a skin disease called “psoriasiform dermatitis” which can lead to lesions. The argument to the ITIA was that the clostebol got into his body because of this disease.

Four days ago, all hell broke loose when the ITIA announced its ruling. Sinner was punished leniently in the form of ranking point deductions and a reduction in prize money during the Indian Wells tournament. Indeed, the palpable outrage in the tennis community is understandable. Someone like Patrick Mouratoglou, the famous French coach who has worked with both Serena Williams and Simona Halep, did not mince his words when he said on social media that Sinner had been given special treatment.

His fear is that Halep has come under fire after she tested positive for roxadustat, a drug that promotes the production of more red blood cells. He has repeatedly said Halep is not guilty, but she had to fight her case for more than two years at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) before receiving an acquittal earlier this year.

Back to more famous names and cases like that of Maria Sharapova, winner of five Grand Slam titles. All hell broke loose when she tested positive for Meldonium in 2016 and was banned. She was never able to lead a normal life again after that and has spoken about her trauma in several interviews.

Surprisingly, Sinner got off lightly. His decision to fire his coach and physiotherapist three days ago seemed more like damage control. It will be interesting to see whether WADA takes up the Sinner case and knocks on the doors of CAS next.

Also read: From Maharajas and Sikhs of Malaya to Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli