Former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova handed four-year ban for refusing doping test

Marketa Vondrousova, the former Wimbledon champion from the Czech Republic, has been banned from tennis for four years after refusing to submit to an anti-doping test at her home in December 2025, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced on Monday. The independent tribunal handed down the maximum suspension after finding that Vondrousova, 26, provided “no compelling justification” for her refusal.

Vondrousova, who rose to fame as the first unseeded woman to win Wimbledon in 2023, claimed she feared for her safety when a doping control officer arrived at her door around 8 p.m. on 3 December 2025. She stated that the officer did not properly identify themselves and failed to follow protocol, which added to her mental stress at the time. Vondrousova subsequently signed a refusal form and later explained her actions on Instagram, citing months of physical and mental exhaustion.

However, the ITIA tribunal, after hearing testimony from both Vondrousova and the doping control officer, concluded that the evidence did not support a valid excuse for non-compliance. ITIA CEO Karen Moorhouse stressed the importance of unpredictable testing as a cornerstone of clean sport, noting that the system cannot allow a player to be better off by refusing a test than by taking one. The ban is retroactive and will expire on 21 June 2030.

Vondrousova, who also reached the French Open final in 2019 and was a silver medalist at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, has not played competitively since January and has fallen to 122nd in the world rankings. In a statement, she maintained her innocence, saying, “I have never doped. I have never had a positive test.” She has the right to appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland and is being represented by American lawyer Howard Jacobs, who previously helped Simona Halep overturn a similar ban.

The case adds Vondrousova to a growing list of high-profile tennis players involved in anti-doping controversies, including Jannik Sinner, Iga Swiatek, and Simona Halep, though those players either tested positive for banned substances or accepted shorter suspensions. The ITIA described a test refusal as “extremely rare,” with only one other similar case — Russian player Vladislav Ivanov — receiving a four-year ban in 2024.