LONDON \u2014 A professional tennis player who said a kiss caused a positive methamphetamine drug test was suspended for four years by the International Tennis Integrity Agency on Friday.<\/p>\n
Goncalo Oliveira, who represents Venezuela, was provisionally suspended in January following a positive test in November 2024 while competing at the ATP Challenger event in Manzanillo, Mexico. Both his A and B samples contained the banned substance.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese-born player denied taking the drug and made his argument at a hearing with an independent tribunal, which decided Oliveira couldn\u2019t prove the drug\u2019s presence was unintentional.<\/p>\n
Oliveria receives credit for time served from his provisional suspension, meaning he will be eligible to compete professionally again on Jan. 16, 2029.<\/p>\n
Oliveria reached a career-high world doubles ranking of 77th in August 2020.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time an athlete has said a positive drug test happened because of kissing.<\/p>\n
French Olympic fencer\u00a0Ysaora Thibus\u00a0was cleared in July by the Court of Arbitration of a doping allegation after judges accepted she was contaminated with the anabolic substance Ostarine in 2024 by kissing her American partner over a period of nine days. She was later cleared by an International Fencing Federation tribunal weeks before the Paris Olympics, which let her compete there.<\/p>\n
In 2009,\u00a0Richard Gasquet\u00a0escaped a lengthy doping ban when the International Tennis Federation\u2019s tribunal panel ruled that he inadvertently took cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 A professional tennis player who said a kiss caused a positive methamphetamine drug test was suspended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-203247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}