Ex-Wimbledon champion Vondrousova appeals to CAS over four-year doping ban

What the report says

Former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over a four-year doping ban, CAS said on Tuesday. According to Al Jazeera’s report based on Reuters, the Czech player’s suspension was imposed in June after the International Tennis Integrity Agency said she did not provide a sample when a doping control officer notified her during an out-of-competition testing attempt at her home in December.

CAS said it had received the appeal but had not yet set a hearing. The ban is due to run until June 21, 2030, when Vondrousova will be 30. The report says she has denied doping and has argued that the testing request came late in the evening and felt intrusive. It also notes that a later test, taken three days after the December 3 incident, returned a negative result.

Vondrousova, 27, has not played since skipping the Adelaide International in January because of a shoulder injury and has fallen to world No. 153. She won Wimbledon in 2023, reached the French Open final in 2019 and won silver for the Czech Republic at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. The case matters because CAS is the top sports tribunal and its ruling could determine whether one of tennis’s recent major champions remains sidelined for the rest of the decade.