Russian teenager banned from tennis for nine months following anti-doping breach
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With the 2017 French Open out of the way, the 2017 men’s tennis season has begun. It’s a new year, a new season, a new chance for tennis stars to showcase their talents and for fans to rejoice at their victory in the French Open.
Tennis fans and players alike are already looking forward to next month’s Australian Open, and also to the French Open this year. And the calendar shows how many exciting tournaments await us in 2017, including the Davis Cup and the new Grand Slam tournaments that will take place from Paris.
A big reason why women’s tennis has dominated this generation of women’s tennis players is that the stars of the game have a lot to offer, but at the same time they are allowed to do as much as they possibly can, be it with drugs, money or both.
One of the tennis stars of the new generation of women’s tennis players is a Russian player who was banned from competition for nine months and is facing a possible lifetime ban after he was found to have used doping during his career.
The new ban was handed down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and according to the court findings, the player’s right to compete should be reinstated after he has served the ban.
Vladimir Ilievic is a star player, having reached the quarter-finals in all but two events played since 2012, and he has shown incredible promise over the past few years. Ilievic took part in the Australian Open, US Open and the French Open between January and April of this year. In the first tournament, he reached the final, while in the US Open he reached the quarter-finals for the second time in his career. But the latest in his career, the French Open for which he was the defending champion, showed something else.
In 2016 Ilievic, who is currently ranked No. 31 in the world, was found to have used doping during his career and was thus banned from the French Open for the 2017 season. He admitted in the court hearing that he had taken a substance that didn’t have as active an effect as the banned substances he had used in his
