‘Panicked’ and ‘Paranoid’ Iga Swiatek Finds Morale Boost in Uplifting Message From WTA Legend Amid Doping Saga

Iga Swiatek wouldn’t have imagined in her dreams that her 2024 season would end on a controversial note. Last Thursday, the former World No.1 revealed in a video message on social media that she tested positive for a banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ). Since then, the five-time Grand Slam champion has been receiving harsh reactions from fans as well as pro players. Many people think that she deliberately took the prohibited substance. However, there are also several notable figures who believe that she’s innocent. Former Australian player and WTA legend Rennae Stubbs is one of them.

In an episode of The Rennae Stubbs podcast, the former pro player revealed her true feelings over Iga’s doping case. According to her, Iga seems to be a person who can’t take a banned substance on purpose. While talking about her personality, Rennae said, “Iga’s already paranoid about everything going on in her life. She looks like she’s panicked about everything at all times.” Adding further, she defended the Polish tennis star saying “You can’t even imagine someone like Iga doing something illegal, because she’d be just on the court. You could tell in the first point, she’d be like, ‘Do they all know? Do they all know? Oh my God, oh my God’. She’s like, ‘I’m a great liar.’”

For Rennae, “there’s just no way” Iga Swiatek can do something like this. “She’s like the last person to have done something like that, because you could just see in her life, she’d be like, they all know, they all know,” she said in the podcast. Moreover, the ex-coach of Serena Williams also provided clarity on rumors suggesting that Iga got preferential treatment from the ITIA. This is in relation to Romanian player Simona Halep who was not happy to see Swiatek getting a shorter ban.

Rennae Stubbs differentiates Iga Swiatek and Simona Halep’s doping cases amid claims of preferential treatment

Several floating rumors suggest that Iga got a soft treatment from the ITIA due to being a top-ranked player. As a result, she received a provisional ban of just a month. The former Romanian pro-Simon Halep seemed disappointed with the fact that Iga’s ban duration was very brief. “I’m sitting and trying to understand, but it’s really impossible for me to understand something like this. I stand and ask myself, why is there such a big difference in treatment and judgment? I can’t find and I don’t think there can be a logical answer,” she wrote on X.

However, Rennae Stubbs seems to have a valid argument here. In the same podcast, she pointed out that both Iga and Simona had a lot of money and a great team of lawyers at their disposal. Even Halep was a top-ranked player when she tested positive, back in 2022. Per Stubbs, the only difference between their cases is “that it took her (Simona) a long time to figure out where the contamination was coming from. That is part of the problem for her. And then also she had quite a large amount of whatever the stuff was. That was in her system.”

She implied that Iga Swiatek’s team was able to find out that the banned substance in her system came from her contaminated medication melatonin. On the other hand, Halep couldn’t do so on time, leading to a lot of delay in her situation. Additionally, even a spokesperson from the ITIA mentioned that “No two cases are the same, they often involve different circumstances, and direct comparisons are not always helpful” while defending Iga’s position. What’s your take on this? Let us know in the comments below.