I hadn't considered your first sentence masterclass but it raises an interesting point.
ITF said nothing until after Maria announced it. If she had chosen to stay quiet, and maintained having an "injured arm" or something, I very much doubt the WTA or ITF would have said anything, at least until everything had been hashed out (appeal process, backdated TUE possibility, etc).
Would they have said something? I'm guessing so... or I don't think Maria would have made the announcement. Maybe they did a deal where they wouldn't say anything until Maria went public.
@britbox , based on their history, I would say that there is about a 98% chance that they would have said nothing unless the player, in this case, Maria, said something.
They said nothing with Agassi, and completely covered it up (no ban, no announcement, nothing), until he revealed it himself.
And we have the recent Cilic case as well. I believe they came up with a knee problem as the excuse why he was not playing. But he had been provisionally suspended.
But then the news leaked out in his country, and then he had to make the announcement and the ITF quickly followed up.
I would be almost certain that there have been many similar cases other than those incidents that we will never know about, or where they delayed.saying anything.
There is a big lack of transparency, shielded by the convenient "privacy of health information" excuse, choosing not to reveal the positive result of a test, until an actual ruling is in hand, which may or may not come.
The claim is that they want to give the player every chance to defend himself so his/her image (and the sport's) will not unnecessarily be tarnished due to the "accusation".
In my opinion, results should be made public as soon as the B sample result confirms the A sample positive. Then there is less room for shenanigans.
Then afterwards, let the process continue, hearings, appeals, etc. and then make the result public knowledge.
If the player has been cleared, announce it, and the reason why, otherwise hand out the appropriate penalty and again make it public.
Anyway, the foxes shouldn't be guarding the chicken coop. It's a big conflict of interest having ITF running their own anti-doping testing program.
The same goes for all sports federations, like IAAF, UCI, FIFA. and the like. Just too much self interest by the people in charge of promoting and protecting the sport.
We've seen it happen, and all those like Lord Coe's running their organizations can claim that they are doing the best they can, but the conflict is there, and where there is conflict of interest, the chance of corruption is very very high. All it takes is a few well placed people that have the information, to either extort or blackmail, or otherwise profit from their knowledge in exchange for keeping things quiet. And then what do we have? A sport that is dirty from the top down.
An independent multi-national agency should be organized by WADA to handle all testing in sports.
They should be given free rein to do all the appropriate testing necessary, results made transparent, and bill each sport federation for the money required to handle the testing and related procedures..
But of course, the people running the sports federations do not appear to want to hand the responsibility to anyone else, as they would lose control of managing the process..
Respectfully,
masterclass
