Professional Tennis Player Suspended for Drug Test: Claims Kiss as Cause
The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) has suspended professional tennis player Goncalo Oliveira, who represents Venezuela, for four years after testing positive for methamphetamine.
Oliveira’s provisional suspension began in January 2024, after a test conducted in November 2024 during the ATP Challenger event in Manzanillo, Mexico, yielded positive results in both samples, A and B, for the prohibited substance.
The tennis player, born in Portugal, denied having consumed the drug and presented his defense before an independent tribunal. However, the tribunal determined that Oliveira could not prove that the presence of the drug was involuntary.
Due to the time he has already been provisionally suspended, Oliveira will be able to compete professionally again on January 16, 2029.
In August 2020, Oliveira reached the number 77 position in the world doubles ranking, his best career position.
This case is reminiscent of others in the sports world where it has been alleged that a kiss was the cause of a positive result in a drug test.
French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus was exonerated in July of a doping accusation after judges accepted that she was contaminated with the anabolic substance Ostarine in 2024 by kissing her American partner for nine days. She was acquitted by a court of the International Fencing Federation weeks before the Paris Olympics, allowing her to compete.
In 2009, Richard Gasquet avoided a lengthy doping suspension when the International Tennis Federation tribunal panel ruled that he had inadvertently consumed cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
