Prague: Marketa Vondrousova, the 2023 Wimbledon champion, said on Friday she was facing a doping investigation after failing to submit a sample during a check last December.
The world number 46 risks up to a four-year ban from tennis for refusing to let in a doping control officer ringing the bell at her Prague home. But she said the check was not standard as the officer from a German agency failed to identify herself. “The recent doping control incident happened because I reached a breaking point after months of physical and mental stress,” the 26-year-old injury-prone Czech said on Instagram.
She told the Sport daily that it “was stressful to see someone I didn’t know asking to enter my living room without showing authorisation”. “At the moment I was thinking this could be anyone,” she added, explaining why she refused to let the officer in.
Vondrousova said she had dealt with injury, pressure and “ongoing sleep issues that left me feeling exhausted and fragile” for some time. She also mentioned the case of her compatriot and two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who suffered a career-threatening injury to her hand when she opened the door to a knife-wielding stranger in 2016.
