Serena Williams has seemingly responded that she feels cheated of an eighth Wimbledon title following news of her tennis rival Simona Halep’s doping violation.
Williams, who retired from the sport after her 2022 US Open, has won 23 Grand Slam titles but lost to Halep in the 2019 Wimbledon final. She was chasing Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 grand slam singles and the match against Halep was one of four grand slam singles finals Williams lost with a score of 6-2.
On Tuesday the International Tennis Integrity Agency gave Halep– the former world number one– a four-year suspension from tennis for two doping offences.
In a semi-cryptic fashion, Williams wrote on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter: “8 is a better number”.
While she gave no further context, the now 3.6M viewers of the message seem to agree it’s clear that Williams feels she should be awarded the eighth Wimbledon title.
There is no evidence to suggest Halep was doping as early as 2019, but with the ITIA’s latest decision, she’ll be unable to play professional tennis again until October 6, 2026.
The 31-year-old Romanian Halep has been provisionally suspended since October last year after testing positive for the blood-boosting substance Roxadustat at the 2022 US Open.
In May this year, Halep was charged a second time with irregularities in her Athlete Biological Passport (ABP)– designed for the long-term monitoring of an athlete’s blood indicators with the aim to identify irregularities that indicate doping.
This week, the ITIA announced that they accepted Halep had taken a contaminated supplement but that they had “determined the volume the player ingested could not have resulted in the concentration of Roxadustat found in the positive sample”.
The ITIA said they received about 8,000 pages of evidence as part of the independent tribunal that came to the “strong opinion” that “likely doping was the explanation for the irregularities in Halep’s profile.
Throughout the process, Halep has maintained her innocence and has said she’ll challenge th ITIA’s decision.
“I have devoted my life to the beautiful game of tennis,” said Halep in a statement. “I take the rules that govern our sport very seriously and take pride in the fact I have never knowingly or intentionally used any prohibited substance. I refuse to accept their decision of a four-year ban. I intend to appeal to The Court of Arbitration for Sport.”