British tennis player Tara Moore cleared of doping as contaminated meat blamed

The former British Fed Cup player Tara Moore was cleared of doping charges on Saturday by the International Tennis Integrity Agency, having successfully argued that she ingested banned substances through eating contaminated meat.

This case has taken 18 months and threatened to end Moore’s career, even though she is only 31. But this positive resolution holds out hope that she can resume, even though she has lost all her ranking points and will have to start from scratch.

In May 2022, Moore provided a urine sample during a WTA 250 event in Bogota, where she and her doubles partner – and also wife – Emina Bektas reached the final. The sample tested positive for metabolites of nandrolone and boldenone, two banned steroids.

At around the same time, Chile’s Barbara Gatica, also tested positive for boldenone in Bogota. Yet both women’s cases were complicated by the fact that Colombian cattle are regularly dosed with steroids before entering the food chain.

A lengthy delay ensued between Moore’s provisional suspension, which began on May 27, 2022, and the tribunal on 14-15 December, 2023. Much of this, it is understood, was at the request of the defendants, who asked for extra time to prepare their defences.

After considering the evidence, the panel decided that neither Moore nor Gatica bore any fault for their positive tests. However, Gatica is still suspended from tennis owing to unrelated offences against the Tennis Anti-Corruption Programme.

In a statement, the ITIA said that it “will continue to issue information concerning the risks of meat contamination in certain parts of the world to all players.”

Moore’s deep run in Colombia had helped her reach No 83 in the doubles rankings at the time of her suspension, making her the highest Briton on the chart. In 2014, she represented her country in the Fed Cup – now renamed the Billie Jean King Cup – but since then she has tended to be something of an outsider within the British tennis set-up, and funded her own legal defence against the ITIA charges.

She made headlines in 2017 when she became engaged to her then doubles partner Conny Perrin, who is Swiss. However, it would be Bektas – a 30-year-old German-born American – whom she ended up marrying.

At the time of the original suspension, Moore said “I have never knowingly taken a banned substance in my career. I am investigating how the positive result could have occurred and look forward to proving that I am a clean athlete.”