tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine<\/a> at June’s grass court event in Mallorca, and is currently serving a mandatory provisional suspension.<\/p>\nThe ban could theoretically stretch to four years, but it will be a maximum of three months if the Australian can satisfy investigators he took the drug out of competition.<\/p>\n
Sources have told BBC Sport this is likely to be the option Kyrgios will choose to pursue.<\/p>\n
A player is deemed to be ‘in competition’ from the day the draws they are competing in begin until they leave the tournament after their final match.<\/p>\n
Before the grass court season, former world number 13 Kyrgios had not played since January’s Australian Open and so has recently spent very few days on site.<\/p>\n
He is considered to have been ‘in competition’ in Stuttgart between 8-12 June, and again in Mallorca on 21 and 22 June.<\/p>\n
It was on 22 June – when he exited the tournament in the first round – that Kyrgios submitted the sample that was later found to contain benzoylecgonine.<\/p>\n
If the 31-year-old can convince the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) he ingested the drug before he was ‘in competition’, there would be no need for an independent tribunal to be formed.<\/p>\n
This would make the process far quicker, and if Kyrgios subsequently agreed to enter a treatment programme, the ban could be as short as one month.<\/p>\n
His provisional suspension began on 4 August, meaning he could even be eligible to compete again from 4 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The severity of the ban facing Nick Kyrgios for testing positive for cocaine depends on whether he can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-599354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}