Doping clouds tennis talk at the Australian Open with Sinner and Swiatek facing scrutiny

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — It is a topic that shadowed tennis in 2024 and is still a talking point as the 2025 Grand Slam season opens at the Australian Open on Sunday (Saturday EST): doping and the cases involving Jannik Sinner — which is still not resolved — and Iga Swiatek.

Both spent much of last year at No. 1, and Sinner still will hold that spot in the ATP rankings when he steps on court at Melbourne Park to begin the defense of his championship, one of two major trophies he won last year.

Swiatek, a five-time Slam champ and the woman leading the WTA rankings most of the past three seasons, is No. 2 behind Aryna Sabalenka, who will be chasing her third consecutive title in Australia.

“Obviously, there are going to be some negative comments," Swiatek said. "You're not going to avoid that.”

Most players prefer to remain silent when asked about the cases. But there are those who have been happy to weigh in, including 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic, raising questions about whether Sinner and Swiatek were treated the same as other players facing similar circumstances and why their situations were kept under wraps for months.

“I sit and wonder, ‘Why such a big difference in treatment and judgment?’” was two-time major champion Simona Halep's reaction to Swiatek's punishment. “I can’t find, and I don’t think there can be, a logical answer."

Halep initially was banned for four years after testing positive for the banned drug Roxadustat at the 2022 U.S. Open, then had that penalty reduced to nine months on appeal — although she already had been off the tour longer than that. She was supposed to compete at Melbourne Park for the first time in three years but withdrew from qualifying because of knee and shoulder pain.

No one has been louder about the subject lately than Nick Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up who missed nearly all of the past two seasons because of injuries. He has been commenting regularly, in real life and online, even taking a jab (that he said was in jest) at Cruz Hewitt after the 16-year-old son of Australian Davis Cup captain Lleyton posted a photo with Sinner from a practice session.

“It’s been handled horrifically in our sport. Two world No. 1s, both getting done for doping, is disgusting for our sport," Kyrgios said at the Brisbane International, the first event of his comeback. “It’s a horrible look.”

Sinner was the dominant player in men's tennis last year, and there's little reason to think that won't continue. In 2024, he went 73-6 with eight titles, including at the U.S. Open, and led Italy to the Davis Cup. He heads into the Australian Open on a 14-match winning streak.

Hanging over it all is this: Two positive tests for a trace amount of an anabolic steroid in March were made public in August; the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) determined he shouldn't be suspended because the exposure to Clostebol was considered accidental — the result of a massage from a trainer who used the substance after cutting his own finger.

The World Anti-Doping Agency was not entirely convinced about the exoneration and thinks a ban of one to two years would be appropriate. Its appeal, lodged in September, is still pending, and a final determination is expected after the Australian Open ends.

“It’s in (my) head a little bit," Sinner said, adding that he is confident everything will go his way.

Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension in late November after testing positive for a banned heart medication known as TMZ. She failed an out-of-competition test in August, and the ITIA accepted her explanation that it was caused by the contamination of a nonprescription medication, melatonin, that Swiatek was taking for jet lag and sleeping issues.

She missed three tournaments — although the real reason wasn't revealed at the time — and finished serving her punishment after the season was done.

“This whole process was pretty abstract sometimes and hard to understand,” Swiatek said, surely speaking for many observers.

Which is why, perhaps, Netherlands captain Paul Haarhuis said what he did after his team lost to Sinner's Italy in the Davis Cup finals.

“Jannik, in my personal opinion, is an unbelievably nice guy (and) great player,” Haarhuis said, “but we (might) never know what happened.”

While Sinner and Swiatek will compete in Melbourne, another player involved in a recent ITIA case won't: Max Purcell, who won men's doubles titles at the U.S. Open in September and Wimbledon in 2022 and was a two-time runner-up at the Australian Open.

Purcell didn't test positive, though. Instead, he accepted a provisional suspension for, as he described it, having “unknowingly received an IV infusion of vitamins above the allowable limit."

“I have no good words for it,” said Jordan Thompson, Purcell's doubles partner in New York last year. "It is a joke."

FILE - Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus holds the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup after defeating Zheng Qinwen of China in the women's singles final at the Australian Open tennis championships at Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)

FILE - Poland's Iga Swiatek holds the trophy after winning the women's final of the French Open tennis tournament against Italy's Jasmine Paolini at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, France, June 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

FILE - Jannik Sinner, left, of Italy gestures as he holds the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup after defeating Daniil Medvedev, right, of Russia in the men's singles final at the Australian Open tennis championships at Melbourne Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

FILE - Poland's Iga Swiatek returns the ball against Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic during the Billie Jean King Cup Finals, at the Martin Carpena Sports Hall, in Malaga, southern Spain, Nov. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)

FILE - Jannik Sinner of Italy poses with ball kids and the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup after defeating Daniil Medvedev of Russia in the men's singles final at the Australian Open tennis championships at Melbourne Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday canceled the final overseas trip of his presidency just hours before he was set to depart for Rome and the Vatican, choosing to remain in Washington to monitor the response to devastating fires raging in California.

Biden was scheduled to leave Thursday afternoon, after eulogizing former President Jimmy Carter at a memorial service in Washington, for the three-day trip to meet with Pope Francis and Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as well as a final face-to-face meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The trip was meant as a coda to the second Catholic U.S. president’s time in the White House and a final opportunity to showcase the strength of American alliances before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

And the sit-down with Zelenskyy would have offered the two leaders one last chance to discuss the path ahead for Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes office amid growing uncertainty about future American support for Ukraine’s effort to repel Russia’s invasion.

The White House had not formally announced the Biden-Zelenskyy meeting. But the two sides had agreed that the leaders would meet in Rome on Friday, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the White House plan.

The Biden administration has provided Ukraine with more than $65 billion in military assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, including $500 million in weaponry that the administration was expected to announce Thursday. There is now less than $4 billion remaining in congressionally authorized funding for Ukraine, and much of that is expected to roll over to the Trump administration to determine whether to continue the weapons support.

Trump, whose warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the years has been heavily scrutinized and who has balked at the cost of aid to Kyiv, added a new layer of doubt about future American support earlier this week when he appeared to sympathize with Putin’s position that Ukraine should not be part of NATO. The president-elect also criticized the Biden administration for expressing support for Kyiv’s eventual membership in the transatlantic military alliance.

NATO members at the July summit in Washington declared Ukraine’s path to the alliance is “irreversible.” But most members, including the U.S., have said Kyiv cannot join while at war and declined to put a timeline on membership.

“A big part of the problem is, Russia — for many, many years, long before Putin — said, ‘You could never have NATO involved with Ukraine.’ Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “And somewhere along the line Biden said, ‘No. They should be able to join NATO.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”

The announcement of the trip’s cancellation came just hours after Biden departed Los Angeles after meeting his first great-grandchild, who was born Wednesday at an area hospital. He received a briefing from local fire officials before returning to Washington, as smoke and ash from blazes raging in the area clouded the daytime sky.

“After returning this evening from Los Angeles, where earlier today he had met with police, fire and emergency personnel fighting the historic fires raging in the area and approved a Major Disaster declaration for California, President Biden made the decision to cancel his upcoming trip to Italy to remain focused on directing the full federal response in the days ahead,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

The large Palisades fire sparked Tuesday morning as Biden was in Los Angeles, and the high winds that helped fuel its massive spread forced the president to scrub a planned visit to Thermal to announce two new national monuments.

While flying back to Washington on Wednesday, Biden approved a federal major disaster declaration for Los Angeles County, allowing for federal funding to be made available for temporary housing and home repairs as well as low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses. It also provides additional financial assistance to state and local governments to cover the costs of fighting and cleaning up after the fires.

Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden walk from Marine One as they arrive back at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)