Mexican Open tennis tournament removes meat from player restaurant due to doping concerns

The Mexican Open in Acapulco will not serve meat in its player restaurant during the 2026 edition, to assuage concerns over doping contamination.

A tour document circulated among tennis players said that the ATP 500 tournament “will provide high-quality protein options that do not include meat”, in order to “minimize the risk of contamination with prohibited anti-doping substances”.

It provided guidance on how to get sufficient protein from fish, eggs and other sources that are not meat, including pulses and dairy.

A spokesperson for the ATP Tour said that ongoing concerns about locally sourced meat had led to the precautionary measure, to both protect players from possible inadvertent anti-doping violations and to preserve the integrity of the tournament.

A spokesperson for the Mexican Open, and a spokesperson for the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), which administers anti-doping protocols in the sport, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has warned that various banned anabolic steroids are used in Mexico and Colombia to fatten cattle. As tennis is an Olympic sport, its anti-doping rules are guided by the WADA Code, and several players have either successfully proven that anti-doping violations were caused by meat contamination, or argued it as part of their defense.

In February 2025, the ITIA found that Brazilian tennis player Nicolas Zanellato bore no fault or negligence for a positive test for the anabolic steroid boldenone, deeming it to have been caused by contaminated meat at a tournament in Colombia in 2024.

British player Tara Moore tested positive for both boldenone and nandrolone, another anabolic steroid, following a tournament in the same country in 2022. Moore was provisionally suspended, but a tribunal convened by the ITIA ruled that she too bore no fault or negligence 19 months later, also finding that contaminated meat was responsible.

The ITIA appealed that ruling, on the grounds that Moore had not accounted for the levels of nandrolone in her sample, which it argued were too high to have been caused by contamination. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld the appeal and imposed a four-year ban on Moore, who is suspended until the start of 2028. She called the anti-doping system “broken” following the CAS ruling.

During last year’s Mexican Open, three top seeds (Norway’s Casper Ruud, Denmark’s Holger Rune, and Tommy Paul of the U.S.) succumbed to illness, but there were no positive tests reported for banned substances. This year’s tournament begins Feb. 23; Tomáš Macháč of Czechia is the defending champion.

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