Matosevic<\/a>, 40, \u200creached a career-high singles ranking of 39 in 2013. He retired \u200cfrom the sport in 2018 and has since \u200cbecome a coach, working with Australian players Chris O’Connell and \u200cJordan Thompson.<\/p>\n“An independent tribunal determined that Matosevic committed five \u200canti-doping rule violations between 2018 and 2020…,” the ITIA said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“… including use of a prohibited method through \u200cblood doping (while an active player) and facilitating \u2060another player to \u200cblood dope, providing advice to other players on how to avoid \u200bpositive tests, and use and possession of the prohibited substance clenbuterol.”<\/p>\n
In a statement published by \u200bAustralian tennis website ‘The First Serve’ in February, Matosevic admitted he underwent a blood transfusion in Morelos, Mexico towards \u2060the end of his \u200bplaying career.<\/p>\n
“I was disgusted with myself, I retired the following week at the age of 32-and-a-half,” he added.<\/p>\n
“Shortly after I realised how precious life is and how \u200cserious and reckless my decision was. I wasn’t involved in tennis at all for almost two years and pro tennis for three.<\/p>\n
“I am writing this confession letter firstly to warn other athletes against doing anything that may harm their health and put their lives at risk because there is a long life after an athlete’s career.”<\/p>\n
In the same statement, Matosevic slammed the ITIA’s \u200cmethods, alleging that many of the claims against him \u200bwere based on his text messages and saying \u200cthat the anti-doping systems in tennis needed to be “dismantled”.<\/p>\n
“The tribunal also dismissed Matosevic’s public allegations relating to the integrity of the ITIA’s investigation process as without merit, and that the ITIA ‘acted within the \u2060authority conferred by the (Tennis \u2060Anti-Doping Programme)’,” the ITIA \u200csaid on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former tennis player and coach Marinko Matosevic of Australia has been handed \u2060a four-year ban after breaching anti-doping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-479684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479684","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=479684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}