Serena Williams will play her first singles match in almost four years at Wimbledon this week. In order to get here, she has had to re-navigate the thorny logistics of the the sport’s anti-doping rules.
She addressed that topic in her pre-tournament news conference on Sunday:
💬 “It’s grueling. I didn’t know some of the rules, so apparently like if you miss a test outside of your window, it still counts as a miss, so I guess I can’t go pick up my kids.”
Under the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules, players have to submit to a test when the doping control officer requires them, even if it is outside their window.
However, outside of that window, if a doping officer can’t find them, they do not get penalized for missing a test, as Williams asserted, when she called the current protocols “unprofessional”.
The 23-time Grand Slam winner said that anti-doping protocols were a major reason she had resisted not coming back earlier.
💬 “My life is busy, I run a VC company. I travel the world. I have children, so it’s like I could be in so many different cities, so many different times, but just getting that discipline of reporting. I always have been very clear about what I do.
“But just getting in that routine of learning the new rules, and then just getting back and reporting every day… It’s just different, at least for me.”
Matt Futterman has more at the link here.
