Mikael Ymer declared that his “conscience is clear” after receiving an 18-month suspension for breaking an anti-doping tennis regulation.
He was cleared by a private tribunal in June 2022 on three counts of failing to report his whereabouts in a single calendar month. The ITF had asked for Ymer to be banned for two years, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decided he should only serve an 18-month suspension.
Although the third whereabouts failure may be characterized as the outcome of criminal negligence, Cas stated that the player’s level of guilt was high. The player was a professional and experienced athlete.
Ymer was situated at a different hotel than the one he had specified, but the player’s agent (who updated his whereabouts on his behalf) was not made aware of Ymer’s change of location and did not provide the essential update on that occasion, according to a statement by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas).
After the International Tennis Federation filed an appeal with CAS, the 24-year-old Swede was given a suspension on Monday. The world number 51 remarked, “I feel their choice to retry me and ultimately find me guilty is unreasonable. Plus, I find it hard to understand how they decided an 18-month suspension was a fair penalty.”
“I am aware that the purpose of these regulations is to safeguard the integrity of our sport, and I accept that this is the case. But I don’t think I breached those laws, and God is my testimony that I have a clean conscience.”
Ymer challenged his third failure, which occurred before an event in France in November 2021 but accepted his first two whereabouts failures in April and August 2021.
