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    Halep Gets 4-Year Suspension for Doping Violation

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    Halep, who tested positive for a banned substance at the U.S. Open in 2022, promised an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.An independent panel overseeing antidoping rules for tennis has issued a four-year suspension to Simona Halep of Romania, a ruling that could effectively end the career of the former world No. 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion.Halep, 31, was charged with two separate breaches of the sport’s antidoping rules, following a failed drug test at the U.S. Open in 2022. Halep tested positive for Roxadustat, a drug commonly used for people suffering from anemia, a condition resulting from a low level of red blood cells.Roxadustat is on the list of banned substances because it artificially stimulates hemoglobin and red blood cell production, which is a technique for players to gain more endurance. The drug does this by getting the body to produce more of the hormone erythropoietin, commonly referred to as “EPO,” which plays an important role in red blood cell production.Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body. More red blood cells can result in increased endurance, which made EPO a particularly common performance-enhancing substance in professional cycling for years.In addition, Halep was also accused of having irregularities in her blood compared with samples that the agency had access to as part of her so-called biological passport, which provides doping enforcement officials with a baseline. The three-person tribunal that heard the case between the International Tennis Integrity Agency and Halep found that those irregularities suggested the use of banned substances during the season.Halep, who had never previously failed a drug test, had argued and provided evidence to support her contention that the Roxadustat had been present in a contaminated supplement that she had taken ahead of the U.S. Open, but that it had not been listed as one of the ingredients. The tribunal accepted that argument, but after hearing expert testimony, it concluded that the supplement contamination could not account for the amount of Roxadustat found in her urine.Karen Moorhouse, the chief executive of the I.T.I.A., said the agency welcomed the decision after a yearlong process that had received significant criticism from both Halep, coaches she has worked with and other players. Moorhouse said that about 8,000 pages of evidence was considered.“The I.T.I.A. has followed the proper processes as we would with any other individual — in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code — fulfilling our purpose and responsibility to uphold the principle of fair competition, on behalf of the sport,” she said.In a statement released through her communications team, Halep said that she had never knowingly or intentionally taken a banned substance and that she would appeal the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which functions as a top court for sports disputes. She said the evidence she had presented to the tribunal was compelling.“While I am grateful to finally have an outcome following numerous unfounded delays and a feeling of living in purgatory for over a year, I am both shocked and disappointed by their decision,” Halep said.The suspension is the highest-profile ruling in the sport since Maria Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s highest-paid female athletes, received a two-year suspension in 2016 for a doping violation.Sharapova tested positive for a heart medication that is said to improve blood flow and allow athletes to recover faster, in January 2016, shortly after it was added to a list of banned substances.Sharapova quickly admitted that she had for 10 years taken a heart drug whose active ingredient is Meldonium to manage what she said were a variety of health problems. She was not aware that the drug had been banned, she said. Sharapova was 29 when she was suspended, and though she did return to tennis, she retired in 2020 when she was 32.If the Court of Arbitration for Sport upholds the suspension, Halep will be banned from competing in tennis until October 2026 because she has been provisionally suspended for nearly a year. More

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      in Basket

      He Used to Post Up. Now He Throws Down.

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      BALTIMORE — Satnam Singh’s favorite wrestling move is the helicopter. Using biceps bigger than newborns and thighs as thick as fire hydrants, he lifts his opponents above his head, whirls them around and tosses them like rag dolls onto the mat.He described the move as he was preparing for work one night: a taping of “AEW: Dynamite,” the signature television show for All Elite Wrestling, an upstart competitor for World Wrestling Entertainment. That night, the audience at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena would see him effortlessly withstand an elevated swan dive into his chest from Samuel Ratsch, who is better known by his wrestling moniker, Darby Allin.“I feel happy,” Singh said in a deep baritone as he stood near an elevator that would lead him backstage. Then he shook his fist and declared, “I feel angry, like I’m going to kick someone.”That’s a good thing, since it’s his job to get angry and kick people — or at least pretend to. At 7-foot-2, he has an imposing presence. His size is useful in wrestling, but challenging when he is shopping for his size 20 shoes or flying on airplanes. But for much of his life, his height was his key asset as he chased a singular goal: getting to the N.B.A.Before he joined A.E.W. last year, Singh was best known for being the first Indian-born player drafted into the N.B.A., in 2015 by the Dallas Mavericks. (The year before, Sim Bhullar, who grew up in Canada, became the first player of Indian descent to sign with a N.B.A. team. Bhullar appeared in three games during the 2014-15 season with the Sacramento Kings.) But Singh’s drafting was a seminal moment for the league’s fledgling efforts to grow the sport in India. It was also a big moment for Singh, 27, the second of his family’s three children in Ballo Ke, a village in the Indian state of Punjab. Suddenly, Singh had “so much weight on my shoulders,” he said, because he was “the only one in the world” drafted from his country.Residents of Ballo Ke, Singh’s home village, welcomed him and his father, Balbir Bhamara, after Singh was drafted into the N.B.A. in 2015.Shammi Mehra/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSeven years later, that burden is gone — though not totally by choice. All Singh had wanted out of life was to represent his country in the N.B.A. He wanted to grab rebounds like the 7-foot-1 star Shaquille O’Neal, one of his favorite players. But after Singh struggled to catch on in the N.B.A., his basketball career was derailed by a failed drug test that he said was a mistake. His search for an alternate path led him to a new dream, and a quest to once again represent India on the global stage.“He did very well in basketball, and now he is doing well in wrestling,” said his father, Balbir Bhamara. “By grace of God, he is making his name.”‘Had so many eyes on me’Bhamara introduced Singh to basketball as a young boy after a friend’s recommendation. (Singh goes by his middle name professionally.) Bhamara is a farmer, but like Singh he is around seven feet tall. He saw an opportunity to put his child’s height to good use in a way he hadn’t been able to do himself.“He will do great and make me proud,” Bhamara recalled thinking, in an interview from Ballo Ke through a Punjabi interpreter. In the family’s one-bedroom flat, a poster of Michael Jordan hangs on a bedroom wall. Bhamara said Singh put it there as he was learning how to play.Basketball was nowhere near as popular in India as cricket and soccer when Singh was growing up. When he met an N.B.A. executive in Punjab at the Ludhiana Basketball Academy in 2010, only an estimated 4.5 million people were playing basketball in India, a country of more than a billion. But Singh loved the N.B.A. stars O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and had already become a minor celebrity in his own right. As a young teenager, he was compared to Yao Ming, the influential 7-foot-6 Houston Rockets star from China.“From the Day 1, I realized he was a man like God sent him specially to us,” Teja Singh Dhaliwal, the general secretary of the Punjab Basketball Association, said in a 2016 Netflix documentary about Singh’s life titled “One in a Billion.”Troy Justice, the head of the N.B.A.’s international basketball development, was the executive who met Singh in 2010. As they became close, the N.B.A. was ramping up efforts to expand in India, opening its Mumbai office in 2011 and starting scouting programs and training academies. The league hosted two preseason games in Mumbai in 2019.Singh in 2011 in New Delhi. When he met an N.B.A. executive the year before, only an estimated 4.5 million people were playing basketball in India.Associated Press“My best friend there said, ‘Troy, do basketball and business like we do traffic in India,’” Justice said. “‘We don’t have lines. You just kind of find an open space and keep moving forward until you reach your destination.’”As the N.B.A. made inroads in India, Singh made his way to the United States. When he was 14, he enrolled at IMG Academy, a high school in Bradenton, Fla., known for developing elite basketball talent. Far from home and trying to learn English, Singh had a difficult time adjusting, said Sonny Gill, Singh’s childhood best friend.But Singh’s size made him an intriguing N.B.A. prospect. He declared for the draft in 2015 and worked out for several teams, including the Rockets. Singh was in high school for five years — a result of the language barrier — and was thus eligible for the draft. The Bollywood star Akshay Kumar called him “an inspiration.” But some saw him as a long shot because he was stiff and slow.“He was very easy to rule out just from the workout, which is risky and teams have been burned,” said Daryl Morey, who was the Rockets’ general manager at the time and now works for the 76ers. “But he definitely did not look like he belonged on an N.B.A. floor.”Many members of Singh’s village traveled to the local gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, to pray for him to be drafted. On the night of the draft, Singh recalled, his feet and hands were shaking. Gill, now Singh’s manager, remembered watching his friend sweat and rub his hands together as each pick was announced at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The first round went by. So did most of the second.“All of India who knew,” Singh said, “everyone had so many eyes on me.”But at pick No. 52 of 60, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, decided to take a shot.“In four or five years, if he continues to progress as he has, he could be the face of basketball in India, easily,” Cuban said in the “One in a Billion” documentary about Singh. “I would expect that to happen. He’s got that much upside.”Singh driving to the basket against Golden State during a 2016 N.B.A. Summer League game in Las Vegas.David Dow/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMany players drafted that late never make the N.B.A., but Singh’s stardom at home reached new heights. Amitabh Bachchan, one of the biggest movie stars in India, congratulated him on Twitter, saying, “India goes to NBA .. now time for NBA to come to India ..!!” Bachchan’s, son, Abhishek, also a well-known actor, offered to play Singh in a movie.But Singh’s American basketball career fizzled. He never appeared in an N.B.A. game in the regular season, and rarely played for Dallas’s developmental team over two seasons. The N.B.A. was moving away from slow big men and toward a more athletic style of play. Singh opted to play in Canada and for the Indian men’s national team as he tried to make it back to the N.B.A.“He was heartbroken,” Gill said. “That’s all he talked about every day.”‘You can open so many people’s dreams’In late 2019, while Singh was preparing for the South Asian Games with the Indian national team, he failed a drug test and was provisionally suspended by the National Anti Doping Agency in India. Gill said Singh took an over-the-counter supplement that he did not realize contained a banned substance. A year later, India’s antidoping agency barred Singh from competition for two years, including the year he had been provisionally suspended.Asked about the ban now, Singh was reluctant to discuss it.“End of day, whatever happened happened,” Singh said. “I don’t want those bad things in my life again, but end of day, I just want to tell everyone to be careful.”Later, he brought the incident up on his own. When he received the ban, Singh said, he saw his free time as a newly cracked door. He thought to himself, “You can open so many people’s dreams to come true.”Singh before an All Elite Wrestling event at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus in November. He said he was focused on wrestling and hadn’t touched a basketball in a couple of years.Matt Roth for The New York TimesSingh had never been much of a wrestling fan, though he did enjoy Dwayne Johnson’s character, The Rock. Professional wrestling, like the N.B.A., had been trying to cultivate a fan base in India, and Singh — a giant like the popular Indian-born wrestler Dalip Singh Rana, known as The Great Khali — looked like he could help.In 2017, while Singh was with the Mavericks’ developmental team, W.W.E. invited him for a workout. He had fun, but he was still focused on trying to get to the N.B.A. That year, W.W.E. made Yuvraj Singh Dhesi — known as Jinder Mahal — the first W.W.E. champion of Indian descent. By 2021, with Singh’s basketball ambitions dulled, he was ready to give wrestling a try.His mother, Sukhwinder Kaur, was initially fearful.“She saw wrestling matches on television and everyone keeps getting thrown out of the ring,” Singh said. “My mom said, ‘I hope he isn’t hurt.’ I told Mom: ‘Don’t worry. Your son will be amazing.’”When Singh approached A.E.W., Tony Khan, who founded the company in 2019, saw an opportunity.“There are very few wrestlers from India or Pakistan in my life,” said Khan, 40, who is of Pakistani descent and the son of the Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan. “Wrestlers of brown-skinned descent are often portrayed as villains or terrorists or some terrible atrocity.”He thought Singh could be different. In September 2021, a month after A.E.W. signed a broadcasting deal with Eurosport India, the company announced that it had signed Singh.Paul Wight, an A.E.W. wrestler best known by his W.W.E. name The Big Show, said Singh was an ideal fit for wrestling. “A basketball player and a tennis player will adapt to wrestling footwork faster than most athletes,” said Wight, who mentors Singh.The A.E.W. producer and manager Retesh Bhalla, known as Sonjay Dutt, left, and Singh performed ringside as “managers” for the longtime professional wrestler Jay Lethal.Matt Roth for The New York TimesMichael Cuellari, known as Q.T. Marshall in the ring, trains Singh at his Atlanta-area wrestling school, the Nightmare Factory. He said much of his job is “teaching him how not to injure somebody while looking like you’re trying to injure somebody.”“Because he’s so big and he’s so strong, obviously he’s going to be very stiff right out of the gate,” Cuellari said.‘Just be himself’Wrestling isn’t just about big muscles and smashing opponents. It is about charisma and connecting with the audience. It is about rip-roaring promos, blasting the opponent and getting audiences to roar, for better or worse.“It’s hard, right?” Cuellari said. “Because he’s got such a deep voice and such a different tone. And on top of that, like, English not being his first language. So we just try to make him feel as comfortable as possible and just be himself.”Singh made his debut in April in a group with the characters Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt. In June, Singh pulled off the helicopter move in his first match. He has been used sparingly as he trains: Take the occasional dive bomb; chuck a human like a shot put every now and then; glower at the camera. Off camera, he has a boisterous personality that has endeared him to his new co-workers.Singh, left, horsing around with his fellow A.E.W. wrestler Will “Powerhouse” Hobbs, middle, and Amanda Huber, A.E.W. community outreach, backstage.Matt Roth for The New York TimesThough there have been successful giants, like Andre the Giant, The Undertaker and The Big Show, fans have largely gravitated toward relatively smaller characters, like The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Rey Mysterio. In many ways, Singh faces the same challenge in wrestling that he did in basketball: Success is increasingly less about brawn than speed and athleticism.“The track record of giants in professional wrestling as quality in-ring technicians is not long,” said Retesh Bhalla, who plays Sonjay Dutt. Bhalla is also an A.E.W. creative executive.But Khan, the A.E.W. founder, is optimistic about Singh. “We’ve seen an increase in traffic when Satnam is involved in segments,” Khan said, adding, “A ton of our YouTube traffic comes from India, and he’s a driver.”Singh said the last time he picked up a basketball was in 2019, when he was suspended. Though his cellphone case has a picture of Bryant, the former Los Angeles Lakers star, Singh said his basketball career is over. He is still willing to mentor players in India, and he has coached at the N.B.A.’s Basketball Without Borders camps there.“He is and was and still will be an inspiration,” said Justice, the N.B.A. executive.Singh seems at peace with his new road — “I am so surprised, but I am so happy,” he said — more concerned with increasing his bench press max from 500 pounds than sharpening his jumpers. He wants to go into acting, the non-wrestling kind. One way or another, he’s once again aiming to be a bridge on behalf of India.Matt Roth for The New York Times More

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      in Tennis

      Simona Halep Suspended for a Positive Doping Test

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      Halep, the ninth-ranked player in women’s tennis, tested positive for an anemia drug.Simona Halep, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion and one of the biggest stars in women’s tennis, received a provisional suspension on Friday after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug during the U.S. Open this summer.Halep, a 31-year-old Romanian, is currently ranked ninth in the world. A representative declined an interview request, but after Halep learned of the suspension on Friday, she wrote on Twitter that news of the drug violation was “the biggest shock of my life.”pic.twitter.com/bhS2B2ovzS— Simona Halep (@Simona_Halep) October 21, 2022
      In a statement, the International Tennis Integrity Agency, which oversees drug testing for the sport, said Halep had tested positive for roxadustat, a drug commonly used for people suffering from anemia, a condition resulting from a low level of red blood cells.The organization said that after the drug was found in her initial sample, Halep requested a test on a second sample, which confirmed the presence of the drug in her system.“While provisionally suspended, the player is ineligible to compete in or attend any sanctioned tennis events organized by the governing bodies of the sport,” the organization said.Roxadustat is on the list of banned substances because it artificially stimulates hemoglobin and red blood cell production, which is a technique for players to gain more endurance. The drug does this by getting the body to produce more of the hormone erythropoietin, commonly referred to as “EPO,” which plays an important role in red blood cell production.Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body. More red blood cells can result in increased endurance, which made EPO a particularly common performance-enhancing substance in professional cycling for years.Halep had never previously received a drug suspension. In her post on Twitter, she stated that “the idea of cheating never crossed my mind once” and that it went against her values. “I will fight to the end to prove that I never knowingly took a prohibited substance,” Halep wrote.Halep’s 2022 season was an up-and-down campaign. She was close to quitting in February, she said, because she had lost her belief that she could compete with the best players in the world. But as she began working with Patrick Mouratoglou, who previously trained Serena Williams, Halep regained her confidence.She entered the French Open in good form but lost her first-round match after suffering what she later described as a panic attack during a three-set battle with Zheng Qinwen of China. At Wimbledon, Halep made it to the semifinals before losing to the eventual champion, Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, but at the U.S. Open the following month she lost in the first round once more, this time to Daria Snigur of Ukraine.In early September, Halep announced that she had nasal surgery to remove what had been a significant blockage in her nose. The condition had made it difficult to breathe for years, she said on social media, but she had never pursued the surgery because it required three months away from playing tennis.At that time, she announced that her 2022 season was over and that she was looking forward to rejoining tennis in 2023. Those plans will now await the outcome of any appeals she makes regarding the drug violation. As a first time-offender, Halep very likely faces a suspension of up to two years, which would begin roughly at the time of her most recent competition.Athletes in Halep’s position, as Maria Sharapova was when she was found to have taken an illegal heart medication, often claim that a physician prescribed the drug for a legitimate medical reason but the athlete did not realize that it was on the banned substances list. But antidoping regulations hold athletes responsible for anything that is found in their bodies. More

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      in Soccer

      Cameroon's Goalkeeper André Onana Just Wants to Play

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      Cameroon’s 25-year-old goalkeeper has already had his career interrupted twice by bans. Now he’s back, and eager to move on.For a goalkeeper of Andre Onana’s experience, the passage of play midway through the first half of Cameroon’s Africa Cup of Nations opener should have been routine.Instead, it was anything but. Not once but twice, Onana misjudged the flight of the ball as it was crossed from one side of the field to the other. The second flap at thin air allowed Burkina Faso to take the lead, and left Onana with his head in the turf, acutely aware of his role in the chaos.Cameroon would eventually rally, score twice and win to provide relief to the millions of fans who expect them to challenge for the tournament’s championship. Onana, too, would rally, eventually playing to the reputation of a man widely regarded as one of Africa’s best goalkeepers. But his rustiness could be explained by something everyone in Yaoundé’s Paul Biya Stadium knew:For the better part of a year, Onana has hardly played soccer at all.In October 2020, Onana failed a routine drug test after it revealed traces of a banned masking agent. He claimed, and investigators agreed, that it had all been an error: He was found to have mistakenly ingested the drug after confusing his wife’s medication for his own after complaining of a headache.Rules are rules, though, and Onana was banished. For seven months, he was not allowed to even set foot inside a soccer stadium, let alone train with his teammates at his club team, the Dutch champion Ajax. And even when his ban was reduced last fall, and his drug exile ended, a new professional one began. Ajax, it seemed, had moved on while its goalkeeper was gone.A blunder by Onana allowed Burkina Faso to take an early lead against Cameroon in the teams’ Africa Cup of Nations opener on Sunday.Mohamed Abd El Ghany/ReutersSo for Onana, 25, this month’s Africa Cup of Nations championship is a rare opportunity to remind people of the player he was, and who he is: the skilled goalkeeper who helped Ajax win two Dutch league titles; the last line of defense for a team that came seconds from reaching the Champions League final in 2019; the anchor of a national squad hoping to regain a continental title on home soil.That Onana can showcase his skills in his home country in the city he grew up in is making it all the more special.“I was talking with my brother, and I said that I think I will know the whole stadium because we live close by,” Onana, 25, said in an interview on the eve of the tournament.Many of Onana’s earliest memories, in fact, involve soccer. Playing in the streets for hours with friends. Walking to the national stadium to sit in the sun watching the national team. His first heroes were African, he said, stars like Patrick Mbomba or Joseph-Désiré Job who could bring the crowd to its feet just by returning for matches at the national stadium that sat a mere 20 minutes from Onana’s front door.The national team was everything to Onana in those days. Cameroon had been one of the first African teams to become a fixture at the World Cup, and even as generations of players turned over, its matchdays offered a source of joy, and pride. Attending games, Onana said, was often an all-day affair.“We were there five hours before the game just to watch 90 minutes,” he said. “And those 90 minutes could affect your week, your month. It was amazing that time to be honest.”Onana’s journey to the national team can be traced to a pickup game before he turned 10. After spending most of the game tearing around the field in midfield or in attack, his preferred positions, Onana was told it was his turn in goal. He excelled, repelling shots that wowed his friends and also an older brother, who told him, “André, I think this is your best position.”Within months he was named as the best goalkeeper at a tournament run by an academy set up by the Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o. His performance earned him a trial, and eventually a move, to Eto’o’s academy in Douala, about four hours from home. There, his performances caught the eye of scouts from F.C. Barcelona.Onana moved to Barcelona’s famed academy shortly after he turned 13. He quickly embraced his new surroundings, but three years into his new adventure, it all came to an abrupt stop. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, announced that Barcelona had breached its regulations on registering minors by signing Onana and other players from outside Europe. Onana, 16 at the time, was told he could not represent Barcelona until he was 18.While the club jettisoned most of the foreign-born players subject to the rule, Onana’s promise was so high that he was persuaded to remain in the academy, where he was allowed to continue practicing every day but not to play in official games. The hiatus from competition took its toll. “You can train as much as you like but in the end you train to play,” Onana said. “And if you don’t, it affects you mentally and physically.”By the time Onana turned 18, and was again eligible to play, Barcelona had signed Marc-André ter Stegen, a promising German goalkeeper, and Claudio Bravo, who had just helped Chile win the Copa América. Onana knew, he said, his future lay elsewhere.He decided to try his luck in the Netherlands, and within a year he had established himself as Ajax’s No. 1 goalkeeper. He was only 19.The timing could not have been better. Ajax, like Barcelona, had a passion for homegrown talent, and the talents that had just started to come into its first team turned out to be its best in a generation. And the ball skills Onana had honed at Barcelona were a perfect fit for his Ajax’s style.Success quickly followed, as did strong performances against richer clubs in European competitions like the Champions League. By the summer of 2020, some of those teams had started to circle, offering Ajax millions for its young goalkeeper. Ajax declined to sell, confident the price for Onana, and its other young stars, would continue to rise.And then, just as it had a few years earlier, it all stopped for Onana when his drug test came back positive. Onana appealed the one-year ban he was given, and European soccer’s governing body accepted his explanation.But under soccer’s regulations, he was still responsible, and so the punishment, reduced to seven months, meant that starting in February 2021 Onana was effectively ostracized from soccer. When his Ajax teammates lifted the trophy that spring to celebrate a title to which he had contributed, he wasn’t allowed to enter the stadium to watch.He had, by then, made peace with his banishment. It was not, after all, his first. But Ajax officials, including the chief executive Edwin van der Sar, a former star goalkeeper, still worried about how Onana would manage the sporting and psychological toll of his time away.Onana has appeared in only two games for Ajax since returning from his most recent ban. He said he planned to leave the club after the season.Maurice Van Steen/EPA, via Shutterstock“When I left the club, I said to Edwin, ‘This is nothing, I’m already used to it,’” Onana said. “He was like, ‘André, how?’ I told him I was banned for two years. So this is just one year. I’ve got this.”To preserve his career, Onana assembled a team of seven specialists and moved to Spain, where he took training sessions every day in Salou, a beach town not far from Barcelona, to stay fit for the day his ban ended.But because he has refused to sign a new contract in the interim, Ajax used Onana sparingly, starting him only twice since he became eligible to play again in November. “I think my time is over in Ajax already,” he said. “I’ve done my best for this club. But in the end I’m not the one who decides who plays or not.”He expects to move on this summer, to another club, another league, another country. A switch to the Italian champion Inter Milan as a free agent for next season is all but agreed.For now, though, Onana is back in Cameroon, back where it all started, back on the field, back with a team that counts on him.The Indomitable Lions face Ethiopia on Thursday in the second game of their quest for an African championship. Onana sees no reason that he will not be playing. More