After 11 Months of Struggle, Halep Admits the Inevitable
Even if I was glad to have apparently been proven wrong when she was allowed to compete again, I guess I can say that my initial assessment that Halep’s ban will mark the end of the career was, in the end, correct, just that it took her 11 months of struggle, plagued by injuries that only allowed her to play six official matches and win a single one, to admit it and announce her retirement. And I do believe her when she said that she hadn’t made up her mind at the start of what ended up being her final match, only doing so when what happened on court made it clear that her body simply couldn’t handle playing tennis at a high level anymore.
But the question that remains is who should, and most preferably who actually will, pay for what was done to her, especially considering the recent cases of other important players testing positive for banned substances, claiming that it was a result of contamination, and receiving little more than a slap on the wrist, possibly without the matter even being made public at first. Not that actual payment, in terms of money, would make up for ending such a great career and the toll all of this took on her health, both physical and mental, and possibly her personal life as well, but some culprits should, at the very least, be clearly identified, and measures should be implemented to greatly reduce the risk of others needing to go through something like this. And by “measures” I’m referring to specific decisions and regulations, not decisionmakers choosing to more or less turn a blind eye, as it happened in those cases that I mentioned…
