Nikola Bartunkova – the 2023 Wimbledon women’ singles runner-up – has been cleared to compete after she accepted a six-month doping ban for unknowingly ingesting a banned substance.
The Czech 18-year-old returned a optimistic take a look at for trimetazidine in February and once more in March and was provisionally suspended.
Trimetazidine is a metabolic modulator typically used as coronary heart remedy.
Following an investigation, the Worldwide Tennis Integrity Company (ITIA) dominated that the optimistic exams had been brought on by a contaminated complement.
In an announcement, the ITIA added that “the violation was not intentional, and that the participant bore no vital fault or negligence”.
As a part of Bartunkova’s sanction, her outcomes between the primary and second optimistic exams have been declared void, except for a first-round consequence at an occasion held within the Czech Republic in March, the place she returned a destructive pattern.
Time served below provisional suspension counts in the direction of the interval of ineligibility, and as such Bartunkova is now free to play.
Bartunkova beat then world quantity 21 Dayana Yastremska to safe her first WTA Tour victory final 12 months.
She was overwhelmed by American Clervie Ngounoue in final 12 months’s Wimbledon juniors last.