Tennis - Nottingham Open - Nottingham Tennis Centre, Nottingham, Britain - June 9, 2021 Britain's Tara Moore in action during her round of 32 match against Britain's Heather Watson Action Images via Reuters/Molly Darlington/File Photo
(Reuters) -Britain's former number one-ranked doubles player Tara Moore has been cleared of an anti-doping rule violation after the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) said on Saturday that she bore no fault for the offence.
Moore was provisionally suspended in June 2022 due to the presence of a prohibited substance in a sample she provided while competing in a WTA 250 event in Bogota, Colombia, where she lost in the final.
The ITIA had said her "A" sample contained Nandrolone metabolites and Boldenone. Both substances are on the 2022 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List.
Moore said she had never knowingly taken a banned substance in her career.
However, the ITIA said that an independent tribunal determined that contaminated meat consumed by her and another player, Chile's Barbara Gatica, in the days before sample collection was the source of the prohibited substance.
"Accordingly, no period of ineligibility was imposed on either player, and the provisional suspensions imposed on each player under the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme have been immediately lifted," the ITIA said.
Moore was far from happy the ITIA took so long to reach a verdict, saying she had gone through "emotional distress" for 19 months as she saw her reputation, ranking and livelihood "slowly trickling away.
"19 months and my team and I are finally given the answer we knew from the very start," she wrote in a post on X.
"It's going to take more than 19 months to rebuild, repair and recuperate from what we've (Moore and her team) been through, but we will come back stronger than ever."
Gatica, however, remains suspended from the sport due to separate Tennis Anti-Corruption Program offences, the ITIA added.
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
