MELBOURNE – Chilean Nicolás Jarry believes the ATP and tennis anti-doping authorities were unfair to him and did not treat him the same way they did Italian Jannik Sinner.
“I would have liked the same support he got when it happened to me. That’s something that affects me personally,” Jarry told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera during an interview in Melbourne.
Jarry was banned from the tour between December 2019 and November 2020 and lost all his ATP points after testing positive for ligandrol and stanozolol, two anabolic steroids. The investigation concluded that the consumption was accidental, caused by contaminated vitamin supplements.
Five years have passed since then, but the Chilean still struggles to move on. This is especially true when cases like those of Sinner—who will be his opponent on Monday at Rod Laver Arena—and Iga Swiatek have been handled entirely differently by tennis authorities.
Sinner tested positive for clostebol, another anabolic steroid, in March 2024 but was allowed to keep playing. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) accepted that the positive result stemmed from accidental contamination through massages by Sinner’s physiotherapist. However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed the decision, and Sinner will face a hearing in April. The Italian could face a two-year suspension.
Swiatek’s case is similar: the Polish player accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for trimetazidine in August 2024. The ITIA determined that the positive result was due to accidental consumption of melatonin containing the banned substance.
Both Sinner and Swiatek were the top-ranked players in the world when they tested positive.
Jarry, ranked No. 34, feels that he did not receive the same treatment as the Italian and the Polish.
“I try to work on it, to talk about it, to not let it affect me, but it’s something I still can’t fully move on from,” he admitted.
Until now, the Chilean had not publicly expressed his frustration about the matter, although players like Australia’s Nick Kyrgios and Serbia’s Novak Djokovic have criticised the decisions made in the “Sinner case.”
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This Monday, the Chilean and the Italian will face each other on Melbourne Park’s most prestigious court. Sinner enters as the defending champion, while Jarry is a potentially tough opponent aiming to turn the page after a chaotic 2024. Last year, Jarry reached the best result of his career with the final in Rome’s Masters 1000 but later suffered from an ear inflammation that left him dealing with vertigo and dizziness for months.
A nightmare that hasn’t completely disappeared: “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same as before, both in tennis and emotionally, because I’ve learned so much, and I don’t want to go back to who I was. Unfortunately, it hasn’t entirely gone away, but it doesn’t affect me as much on the court anymore. I’m playing well, and I’m grateful for that, so I keep working and hoping that one day it will completely go away, and I’ll be 100 percent healthy. There’s a chance it won’t, but I remain hopeful that I can get back to feeling as if I never had that injury.”
