Andy Roddick has slammed the team surrounding world number one Jannik Sinner as the player faces intense scrutiny after testing positive for steroids.
In a highly complicated situation, Sinner tested positive for anabolic steroids in two separate tests but was given the OK after the International Tennis Integrity Authority concluded that the banned substances had accidentally entered his system through a massage.
Roddick spoke at length about the controversy on the Served podcast with Jon Wertheim.
Acknowledging the uncertainty surrounding the matter, Roddick explained his opinion on the situation by saying the world at large right now is good at “headlines” but not “nuance.”
“I think it was a negligence on the part of my team members. I think it was a huge mistake,” Roddick said.
“I don’t know how you can put something like that near people without testing them. Another thing, I totally blame his trainer. Before he started working with Yannick, there was an Italian basketball league and a guy got suspended for a year because his wife was using this spray and it got on him.”
Roddick continued, “If you’re in orbit and you know it happened and it’s an easily detectable substance and it’s still on your finger, look, I don’t know what that situation is, but Yannick might be more forgiving than I am.”
Earlier in the conversation, Roddick said everyone knows how strict tennis’ testing protocols are.
“So tennis probably has the longest list of banned substances of any sport. For example, you can’t take things like athlete’s foot medicine, Sudafed,” Roddick said.
“Anything you buy at CVS as a cold medicine, 80 percent of that would probably test positive if you took it. So there’s two things. One, it’s very strict and we have to think about it. And two, we don’t know how this substance got anywhere near him.”
“If that [taking] Anything [potentially suspect]and it was like, ‘No.'”
