The Professional Tennis Players’ Association, which was co-founded by Djokovic to increase player power, introduced a scheme in January which offers free support from two prominent law firms.<\/p>\n
The number of legal hours provided is limited, and there will be restraints too on what the ITIA will be able to offer.<\/p>\n
There is already pro-bono legal support offered to players who test positive by Sport Resolutions – an independent dispute resolution company.<\/p>\n
This will now be open to players from the moment they test positive, rather than when they are charged, but long-term support is dependent on finding lawyers who are prepared to work for free.<\/p>\n
Up to $5,000 (\u00a33,730) worth of assistance will be available to those who wish to use a Wada-accredited laboratory to prepare a case.<\/p>\n
Individuals will also be able to sign up for six sessions at Sporting Chance, the mental health organisation set up to support professional athletes.<\/p>\n
“Anyone who finds themselves part of either an anti-doping or anti-corruption investigation deserves the opportunity to defend or explain themselves, and we recognise the process can come at both a financial and emotional cost,” ITIA chief executive Karen Moorhouse said.<\/p>\n
“No player picks up a tennis racquet as a child with any motivation other than playing the game.<\/p>\n
“Individuals find themselves in these situations for a lot of reasons, and so no matter what those reasons are, and where the case ends up, they also deserve someone to talk to.”<\/p>\n
The trial will be reviewed at the end of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Professional Tennis Players’ Association, which was co-founded by Djokovic to increase player power, introduced a scheme in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-186661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}