http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/sports/tennis/varvara-lepchenko-meldonium-itf-doping.html 2016-09-21 03:16:56 Varvara Lepchenko Is Cleared in Meldonium Inquiry Lepchenko, an American ranked 79th, was declared by the International Tennis Federation to bear “no fault or negligence” for her doping rule violation. === Months after reports of a doping violation first surfaced, 79th-ranked Varvara Lepchenko was declared to bear “no fault or negligence” for her antidoping rule violation by the International Tennis Federation on Tuesday after having tested positive for meldonium in January at a WTA tournament in Brisbane, Australia. Meldonium, a heart medication that was a popular supplement among athletes from the former Soviet Union, Lepchenko is the first American athlete, but the third tennis player, revealed to have tested positive for meldonium. Lepchenko, 30, was born in Uzbekistan, but moved to the United States in 2001. The three tennis players, all of whom tested positive in January, have encountered widely varying timelines and consequences for their tests, complicated by WADA’s lack of prior research into how long meldonium might linger in an athlete’s sample after ingestion. Maria Sharapova, the highest-profile athlete to test positive for the drug, is appealing Sergey Betov, a Belarussian doubles specialist, Lepchenko’s case remained unresolved for longer because the concentration of meldonium in her first positive sample, 12,360 nanograms per milliliter, was 93 times greater than the concentration in Betov’s sample. According to She tested positive for diminishing amounts of meldonium at three subsequent out-of-competition tests, through April. She was forced to forfeit only the prize money and ranking points gained in Brisbane, the site of her only failed in-competition test. Lepchenko was apparently not tested weeks later at the Australian Open, where Sharapova tested positive for meldonium. Lepchenko was able to keep the $73,639 and 130 ranking points she earned there for reaching the third round, as well as her earnings at subsequent tournaments in Dubai and Doha. Lepchenko, like Sharapova, was informed of her positive test in March, and she served an unannounced provisional suspension from the tour until April, when WADA released protocols for how long meldonium could be expected to linger in athletes who stopped taking it before Jan. 1. Lepchenko returned to competition in Rome the next month. Weeks later, a report surfaced in Russian news media that her father had told a Russian trainer that she had served an unannounced meldonium ban. The I.T.F. would not confirm this, and Lepchenko refused to confirm or deny anything, even under The farcical scene may have been a catalyst for change. Within days, the I.T.F. president, David Haggerty, The federation explained the decision as one necessary to improve perceptions of its antidoping program. “The reputation of the Programme and, consequently, the image of tennis, have been damaged by accusations that players have been allowed to serve bans without those bans being made public (so-called ‘silent bans’),” “This rule change will prevent any further similar accusations and so protect our sport,” the federation said. But such transparency was not yet the norm during Lepchenko’s case. During her second-round victory over 15th-seeded Timea Bacsinszky at the Lepchenko again declined to discuss her case after that match, but she did discuss the meldonium cases around the Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, as well as Sharapova’s, whose appeal will be ruled on by the international Court of Arbitration for Sport in the first week of October. “Obviously, I feel really, really bad for her, because she didn’t check the rules and it happened to her,” Lepchenko said of Sharapova. “I don’t know what they’re going to come up with in the appeal. Again, this medication they were saying was like an aspirin, and then the next year it became it illegal, and all the sudden you’re a cheater or a bad person.”