USA’s Coco Gauff brought to tears by interaction with anti-doping tester
London, June 30: Coco Gauff said she was brought to tears by a “pushy” anti-doping tester. Serena Williams called the system “gruelling.”
Protocols designed to protect tennis from doping are in the spotlight as players open up about their experiences navigating the system in the aftermath of a four-year ban handed to 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova – not for testing positive but for refusing to take a test.
Players are required to provide a 60-minute time slot each day to be available for testing, plus the International Tennis Integrity Agency says that if a doping control officer “locates and notifies a player outside of that hour, they must complete the test.”
Naturally, there’s a need for communication between players and testers.
“I’m not going to lie, some of them can be pushy, make you feel like you’re doing something wrong,” Gauff, the No. 7 seed, said after her first-round victory at Wimbledon.
“One time she came outside my time slot. But the way she was speaking to me on the phone, it literally made me cry afterwards,” the 22-year-old American said. “I found out I was in the right, and I didn’t have to do anything.”
Ahead of her first-round match Tuesday, Ajla Tomljanovic described her close calls.
“I’m very scared of the system because it feels broken,” she said. “I’ve had a few experiences of my own where it was about technicalities and when I speak to people in charge they’re not helpful – I don’t want to say they don’t care – but they weren’t very helpful at all to explain things or just show some sort of compassion when I was nowhere near missing a test or testing positive.”
The Vondrousova case
The 27-year-old Czech player, who became Wimbledon’s first unseeded female champion when she beat Ons Jabeur in the 2023 final, refused to take a test in early December 2025 after a doping control officer rang her apartment’s intercom at 8 p.m.
This month, following a hearing by an independent tribunal, Vondrousova received the maximum four-year ban for a first offense.
ITIA published a video explainer of the case, saying Vondrousova on the night in question challenged the timing of the test because it was outside her designated time slot.
The agency noted: “If a Doping Control Officer, or DCO, locates and notifies a player outside of that hour, they must complete the test.”
Vondrousova had described the tester as “aggressive” and said the frequent ringing of the intercom “triggered a state of distress,” the ITIA video says. (AP)
