'I have been the underdog': Victim Tara Moore says the 'system is broken' amid four-year doping ban

Tara Moore. (Getty/Jordan Mansfield)

British tennis player Tara Moore has broken her silence after receiving a shock four-year doping ban, in a saga which has dragged on for over three years.

The 32-year-old breached Articles 2.1 and 2.2 of the 2022 Tennis Anti-Doping Program (TADP) after her system contained Nandrolone metabolites and Boldenone and its metabolite after consuming contaminated meat, which are prohibited on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) list.

The case was open for the next 19 months without resolution, which prevented her from taking the court, but her doping charges were dropped in December 2023, deemed to have borne "no fault or negligence" by an independent tribunal.

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However, the former doubles world No.77 was slapped with the maximum penalty of four years after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) confirmed that she had "failed to establish that it was not intentional".

A disappointed Moore shared a message via her X account.

"To be innocent and to have to prove this is an incredibly exhausting process. First, you are trying to figure out what all these things are. Second, you are trying to figure out how and why these things enter your system. If you are innocent, you don't know it immediately. You have to remember everything you have done and eliminate what could not be, until you definitively come up with that 'something' that might have the answer. But even at that moment, you are supposedly guilty and have to fight for your life against someone who has much more money and resources than you," she said in a statement.

"The last three and a half years have broken me in many ways. My family and friends have managed to gather the broken pieces and put them back together, forming a completely different person. I don't need a jury to tell me I'm innocent; I know perfectly well my integrity and I know I am innocent. I believe anyone can see how subjective this process has been in these recent years.

"I have been helpless, a laboratory guinea pig. I had a life, but that life I knew has been taken from me. All those organisations and people in power have taken it from me for not doing the right thing. Perhaps they have taken away my fight on the court, but this battle is not over yet. Not for me, nor for many others who may be in this position.

"The anti-doping system is broken; I am the best proof of that. We have to fix it. Not for me, because it is already too late, but for future players who may find themselves in this unfortunate situation. I will have much more to say when the time comes."

It comes after the current Wimbledon champions, Iga Świątek and Jannik Sinner, recently served one and three-month bans respectively, after both players tested positive for a banned substance.

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