The British tennis player Tara Moore, who was previously cleared of an anti-doping rule violation, has been handed a four-year ban after the court of arbitration for sport upheld an appeal filed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency.
Moore, Britain’s former No 1-ranked doubles player, was provisionally suspended in June 2022 owing to the presence of prohibited anabolic steroids nandrolone and boldenone in a blood sample.
The player said she had never knowingly taken a banned substance in her career and an independent tribunal determined that contaminated meat consumed by her in the days before sample collection was the source of the prohibited substance.
Moore lost 19 months in the process before she was cleared of the rule violation, but Cas upheld the ITIA’s appeal against the first instance “no fault or negligence” ruling with respect to nandrolone.
In a statement, Cas said: “After reviewing the scientific and legal evidence, the majority of the Cas panel considered that the player did not succeed in proving that the concentration of nandrolone in her sample was consistent with the ingestion of contaminated meat.
“The panel concluded that Ms Moore failed to establish that the ADRV [anti-doping rule violation] was not intentional. The appeal by the ITIA is therefore upheld and the decision rendered by the independent tribunal is set aside.”
Moore had previously said she felt her reputation, ranking and livelihood was “slowly trickling away” for 19 months during her initial suspension.
The 32-year-old had also filed a cross-appeal at Cas “seeking to dismiss the ITIA appeal, dismiss the nandrolone result in the ADRV or alternatively confirm that she bears no fault or negligence”.
However, Cas said the cross-appeal was declared inadmissible and her four-year period of ineligibility would start from Tuesday, with credit for any provisional suspension that has already been served.
“Our bar for appealing a first-instance decision is high, and the decision is not taken lightly,” the ITIA’s chief executive, Karen Moorhouse, said in a statement.
“In this case, our independent scientific advice was that the player did not adequately explain the high level of nandrolone present in their sample. Today’s ruling is consistent with this position.”
Moore is ranked 187th in the world in doubles and No 864 in singles – 11th in Britain in doubles and No 27 in singles. In recent times, she has been taking part on the ITF World Tennis and WTA 125 tours, the rungs below elite level. She is also a former Billie Jean King Cup team member, and in February 2022 – five months before her provisional suspension – Moore became Britain’s No 1-ranked women’s doubles player for the first time. She competed in doubles at this year’s Australian Open, losing alongside Austria’s Julia Grabher in the first round.
In a 2019 tournament in Sunderland, Moore made headlines after staging an astonishing comeback from 0-6, 0-5 and 30-40 down to beat France’s Jessika Ponchet.