Tara Moore, the former British No 1 in doubles, has been handed a four-year doping ban after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) upheld an appeal by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA). The 32-year-old was initially cleared of an anti-doping rule violation by an independent tribunal, but Cas overturned that decision.
Moore was provisionally suspended in June 2022 after a blood sample tested positive for the prohibited anabolic steroids nandrolone and boldenone. She maintained she had never knowingly taken a banned substance, and the original tribunal accepted her defence that contaminated meat was the source. However, Cas ruled that she failed to prove the contamination claim and that the violation was intentional.
In its ruling, Cas stated: 'After reviewing the scientific and legal evidence, the majority of the Cas panel considered that the player did not succeed in proving that the concentration of nandrolone in her sample was consistent with the ingestion of contaminated meat.' The panel concluded that Moore failed to establish the violation was not intentional.
The ITIA's chief executive, Karen Moorhouse, said: 'Our bar for appealing a first-instance decision is high, and the decision is not taken lightly. In this case, our independent scientific advice was that the player did not adequately explain the high level of nandrolone present in their sample.'
Moore had previously described the 19-month suspension as causing her reputation, ranking and livelihood to 'slowly trickle away'. Her cross-appeal was declared inadmissible. The ban takes effect from Tuesday, with credit for time already served under provisional suspension.
Moore, currently ranked 187th in doubles and 864th in singles, competed at this year's Australian Open and was a Billie Jean King Cup team member. She made headlines in 2019 for a remarkable comeback from 0-6, 0-5 down in Sunderland.
