LONDON: Italy’s Sara Errani has been suspended for two months after failing a doping test, the International Tennis Federation announced on Monday.
The 30-year-old former world number five, who reached the French Open final in 2012, tested positive for the banned substance letrozole in an out-of-competition test in February.
Letrozole is used in the treatment of breast cancer, but can also be used as a masking agent.
“An Independent Tribunal ... has found that Sara Errani committed an Anti-Doping Rule Violation ... and, as a consequence, has disqualified the affected results and imposed a period of ineligibility of two months, commencing on 3 August 2017,” the ITF said in a statement.
In a statement posted on her Twitter page, she wrote: “I never took, in my life and during my career, any prohibited substance.
“However, this substance (letrozole) is present in Femara, a medicine my mother has been using daily since 2012 for therapeutic purpose, further to a surgery for breast cancer, and therefore is present in the house where I am currently living.”
Errani said she was likely to have consumed the drug via “accidental food contamination”. — AFP
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