Jannik Sinner has been dominating the tennis headlines, naturally, after the news that emerged regarding his involvement in an alleged drug scandal.
This was an issue that had been rumbling on since March, but only publicised recently, and it has sent the sporting world into raptures.
Controversy is rife despite many not knowing the full story, and Andy Roddick has now sought to defend the 23-year-old, who is being bombarded.
Andy Roddick reacts to Jannik Sinner’s case
Speaking on the Served with Andy Roddick podcast, the former world number one went into great detail when talking about Jannik Sinner’s escaped drugs case, telling a story justifying the reaction to the controversy and how it might impact the wider tennis world were it to be harsher.
He claimed: ‘Opinions are easy and are hard to covert people off of their opinions, so I am going to give you a real-life story that I didn’t know about until today.
‘I am literally texting with a player who is a current player who I will not name, this is someone who is highly respected in the game.
‘He told me a story – he said I got one of the emails one time of ‘You are under investigation because a sample came back from x tournament’ and he’s going ‘I have done literally nothing!’ So those against the zero fault and zero negligence policy, which they are running off, which is why some people get off and some people don’t.
‘He has to write out five days [to give an explanation]. He goes ‘My soul dropped down through my soul of my shoes,’ you know when news comes and it’s not great. He goes ‘I feel that all over and I have no idea. I don’t know. So I write through my truths from my time period as well as I can.’ This was a story I had never heard about and tennis is a small world, where you kind of hear about stuff a lot. Some of it is true and some of it is not.
‘So, he goes we didn’t leave the hotel, only ate at the hotel, treatments, he goes all I could do is write my truths.
‘Then end of the investigation, so all of the zero space, you are responsible for what’s in your body. There were 40 players and there was a contaminated substance in this spaghetti bolognese at the hotel that week. So if it’s zero tolerance and you are what you eat, we would have lost 20% of the top 300 players by virtue of this challenger, through no fault of their own.
‘That story seems rough to me! So think what you want, but put yourself in the shoes of anyone who gets terrible, reputational news. I would say allow for grace. Jannik’s press conference is Friday and as far as I understand it, he is going to talk about it once and then try and get on with his life.’
With that in mind, many are questioning what is clostebol and how it would have impacted the athlete.
Jannik Sinner must dispel all distractions for the US Open
Although it will be tough, Jannik Sinner will simply have to expel all this stress from his mind if he is to go all the way at the US Open.
However, it’s worth noting that this process has been ongoing ever since Indian Wells in March, and since then the Italian has still enjoyed plenty of success.
In fact, just last week he won the Cincinnati Open, proving that he can still compete despite this behind-the-scenes turmoil.
It just remains to be seen how he will contend with it now it is all out in the open.
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