Tennis Catches Yet Another Case (Updated)
Max Purcell is the third 2024 major champion to run afoul of anti-doping rules after a huge win this year.
[UPDATED AND REWRITTEN AFTER PURCELL’S STATEMENT]
A bit of breaking news to address before the mailbag later today…
Max Purcell, recent champion of the U.S. Open men’s doubles tournament, became the latest tennis player to have on-court triumphs in 2024 darkened by news of an anti-doping rule violation, according to news released early Monday by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA).
Purcell, a 26-year-old from Sydney ranked 12th in the ATP doubles rankings and 105th in the singles rankings, does not have the name recognition of either Jannik Sinner or Iga Swiatek, both of whom tested positive in high-profile cases revealed in recent months. But by winning his second major men’s doubles title in New York alongside Jordan Thompson in September—not to mention his runner-up finish with Thompson at Wimbledon a couple months before that—Purcell is the third player to have won a major title in 2024 before running afoul of the anti-doping regulations later this same year.
The ITIA’s announcement said that Purcell had requested to begin a provisional suspension for an admitted breach nearly two weeks ago, on December 10th.
Here’s the ITIA’s brief statement on the matter, in its entirety:
The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) today confirms that Australian tennis player Max Purcell has elected to enter into a voluntary provisional suspension under the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme (TADP).
26-year-old Purcell, currently ranked world number 12 in doubles, has admitted to a breach of Article 2.2 of the TADP relating to the use of a Prohibited Method, and requested to enter into a provisional suspension on 10 December 2024. The suspension came into effect on 12 December 2024, and time served under provisional suspension will be credited against any future sanction.
During the provisional suspension, Purcell is prohibited from playing in, coaching at, or attending any tennis event authorised or sanctioned by the members of the ITIA (ATP, ITF, WTA, Tennis Australia, Fédération Française de Tennis, Wimbledon and USTA) or any national association.
As the matter is ongoing, the ITIA is unable to offer any further comment until its conclusion.
At time of publishing this post, Purcell has not posted any explanation or statement shedding further light into his case, nor has he done any interviews that I’ve seen, so very little is public knowledge.
Update: About an hour after this post went up, Purcell posted an explanation on Instagram saying that he had an intravenous infusion of vitamins which was over the limit.
Purcell’s statement:
As announced by the ITIA today, I have voluntarily accepted a provisional suspension since I unknowingly received an IV infusion of vitamins above the allowable limit of 100 ml. Until last week when I received medical records from a clinic showing that the amount of an IV I had received was above 100 ml, I was fully convinced that I had done everything to ensure that I had followed the WADA regulations and methods. But the records show that the IV was over that 100ml limit, even though I told the medical clinic that I was a professional athlete and needed the IV to be below 100 ml. This news was devastating to me because I pride myself on being an athlete who always makes sure that everything is WADA safe. I volunteered this information to the ITIA and have been as transparent as possible in trying to put this whole situation behind me. I look forward to being back on the court soon.
A Prohibited Method violation is very rare, as is how this case seems to have unfolded, so let’s get into both the process and the category of Prohibited Method violations.
The Purcell Process
The ITIA’s headline—“Australian tennis player elects to enter voluntary provisional suspension”—emphasized that the developments that are so far public in this case were at Purcell’s initiative. He proactively admitted an offense and requested to begin a suspension; it took the ITIA two days to process and grant Purcell’s request, which suggests they didn’t expect it. Starting the clock now could make sense given the timing in the calendar: any time served now will count toward whatever Purcell’s ultimate punishment might be, and there are no tournaments to miss in mid-December (though the 2025 United Cup already starts before this week ends, which is absurd).
Was Purcell just getting ahead of a suspension from the ITIA that was imminent anyhow? It’s unclear. It’s possible, given the sequence of events as we currently know them, that Purcell’s rule violation was for something the ITIA hadn’t yet realized had even occurred when Purcell requested a voluntary provisional suspension. Or it’s also possible that there was some other process going on related to this case which we don’t yet know about.
There was a recent indication something was askew for Purcell, however: Purcell was noticeably absent from the initial lists of Australian Open wild cards which were announced on December 13th.
At 105th, Purcell was Australia’s highest-ranked player outside the main-draw cut-off—and he’d been ranked as high as 40th in 2023—so his omission in favor of older players with worse rankings was conspicuous. While all of its women’s wild cards were announced, Tennis Australia still hadn’t awarded one of its eight men’s main draw wild cards; it’s possible it was being set aside for Purcell pending the status of this case.
Purcell’s Prohibited Method
The most eye-catching bit of the ITIA’s statement is the two-word description of what Purcell’s offense was: not the typical “Prohibited Substance” at hand in nearly all anti-doping cases, but rather a “Prohibited Method.”
Prohibited Method cases are far rarer; in fact, they only take up one page of WADA’s 24-page Prohibited List document, so I’ll share that entire page in full below and then look at the possibilities:
Update: Purcell indicated in his statement that he violated Rule M2.2 about the maximum amount of intravenous infusions allowed, which he said was for “vitamins.”
Here’s an overview of the categories that can come up in Prohibited Method violations, roughly ordered from most unlikely to most likely to be at play in tennis.
Gene and Cell Doping
Gene and Cell Doping are, at this point as far as I can find, fully hypothetical methods that have never been proven to have yet been used by any athlete. This is a potentially fascinating area of science and performance enhancement, but it science fiction until proven real and seems extremely unlikely to be surfacing in tennis any time soon.
Blood Doping
Blood Doping is one of the methods used by Lance Armstrong, one of the most infamous dopers of all time, during his Tour de France wins, and also known to have been used by many other cyclists of that era. It involves, most commonly, the athlete being reinfused with his or her own blood, after the blood was stored for a time period outside the body, in order to increase red blood cell count.
Blood doping has only previously surfaced in tennis anti-doping cases in Simona Halep’s case. Halep was popped not because of a method, though, but because she tested positive for an EPO-type banned substance, Roxadustat, which she claimed was in a contaminated supplement.
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A “Prohibited Method” violation does not indicate any specific substance usage. And unless there was some large scale investigation going on into cycling-style blood doping rings in tennis—it seems unlikely that a Prohibited Method violation for blood doping would precede a positive test for a banned substance.
Chemical and Physical Manipulation
That leaves the final remaining category of Prohibited Method violations: Chemical and Physical Manipulation. These seem like the most common ways that someone could possibly run afoul of without a sophisticated doping operation, particularly the first definition of manipulation that involving tampering with samples:
M2.1. Tampering, or Attempting to Tamper, to alter the integrity and validity of Samples collected during Doping Control. Including, but not limited to: Sample substitution and/or adulteration, e.g. addition of proteases to Sample.
There are a couple plausible ways that Prohibited Method scenarios that fall under tampering could happen, especially if an athlete suspects he might have a banned substance in his system—either performance enhancing or recreational—which could trigger a positive test.
While WADA mentions a sophisticated example in its rulebook—proteases are enzymes which break down proteins—there are much more amateurish ways for an athlete to try to fudge a urine sample. These could be as crude as intentionally spilling it, or diluting the sample with water or another liquid. Or, alternately, an athlete could attempt to swap someone else’s clean urine in for his own, or have someone else pretend to be him when providing the sample.
Playing the percentages in this rare Prohibited Method category, this sort of ham-handed event seems most likely.
Purcell said that his violation was in the other part of the “Chemical and Physical Manipulation” subheading, with an excessive intravenous infusion. There are still some questions I imagine the ITIA would have about this case, even with the purported self-reporting that Purcell says he proactively did. The ITIA likely knows more details than are public at this point, but some of those questions could include: What were the contents of this infusion? What sort of setting was it performed in? Was the infusion done around the same time as an anti-doping test was expected? What caused there to be new revelations about this infusion incident after the fact?
If the case is as simple and straightforward as Purcell framed it as being, this could be little cause for concern, and perhaps just an overly conscientious self-reporting that few other players would have had the inclination to do to themselves. If there are other elements of this case that have been obscured that make this seem like a messier situation than we know, perhaps that could be cause for wider alarm as we wrestle with an increase in doping issues in tennis.
Purcell—and the sport as a whole—will hope that this sudden fire is put out quickly and thoroughly by the ITIA’s ultimate findings. It will be important to the sport as a whole, too: There’s an increasing amount of smoke drifting out of the top floors of tennis, and assurances that there is no fire to be found anywhere in the structure might prove increasingly hollow for the public, and perhaps even fellow players.
Thank you for reading! If you are still looking for a last-minute holiday gift idea, maybe a gift subscription to Bounces for the tennis fan on your list could do the trick?
-Ben
I no longer have faith that tennis is a clean sport. When both number one players—Sinner and Swiatek—test positive, how could anyone?
As you report this, one would like to know if he was essentially trying to dope legally. It's interesting that the m 2.2 clause seems to allow 100 ml twice daily. Is this performance enhancing?