Tennis player who used ‘kissing’ as anti-doping defense suspended for four years
A tennis player who used kissing as his defense in an anti-doping case has been suspended for four years.Gonçalo Oliveira, a Portuguese-born player who represents Venezuela, was provisionally suspended in January after testing positive for methamphetamine in November 2024, at a ATP Tour Challenger event in Manzanillo, Mexico.After the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) notified Oliveira of his being provisionally suspended, he requested that a woman, whose name is redacted in the ITIA’s full decision in Oliveira’s case, provide a witness statement.She testified that she met Oliveira at a bar in Manzanillo, and that they “ended up kissing” a little after she “consumed a pill which made me feel euphoria, agitation, confidence to socialize and in the moment a a feeling of energy and joy.” In a later interview with an ITIA investigator, she confirmed this account, but declined to name the drug out of privacy.Oliveira used her testimony, as well as his own that they spent an extensive amount of time kissing at the bar, during the ITIA’s investigation into his case. When it issued a decision that he should be suspended for four years, Oliveira requested a hearing with an independent tribunal.After taking into account the testimony of the player and the woman, as well as submissions from experts provided by the ITIA and Oliveira, the tribunal ruled that, on the balance of probabilities, Oliveira did not successfully prove that kissing was the source of amphetamine contamination, and upheld the ITIA’s four-year ban.Oliveira will be eligible to compete in January 2029, thanks to credit from his time provisionally suspended. He is not the first tennis player to argue that kissing was the source of an anti-doping violation. In 2009, Richard Gasquet was provisionally suspended for testing positive for cocaine, but successfully argued that it was the result of kissing a woman in a Miami nightclub.
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