Simona Halep’s career restarted at the Miami Open 2024 thanks to a wild-card granted by the tournament organizers.
The Romanian tennis player was thus able to embrace her beloved tennis courts again for an official event, after the CAS reduced her doping disqualification to nine months, thus allowing her to return to playing tennis for the first time since August 2022.
Halep was defeated in three sets by Paula Badosa, but she showed, especially in the first set, an already good psycho-physical level, which bodes well for the continuation of her season.
The wild-card granted by the Miami Open board to Simona Halep attracted criticism from Caroline Wozniacki who, in a press conference, attacked her colleague head-on, saying.
“If someone has tested positive for doping, it’s my personal belief that I don’t think people should be awarded wild-cards afterwards,” said Caroline.
Halep responded to the accusations, saying: “Yeah, but why? I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t dope. So it’s better if we read the decision from CAS that it was a contaminated supplement , it wasn’t doping. I never had something to do with doping. I never doped, so I’m not a cheater.
Thank you to the tournament for giving me the wild card and have the possibility to play in such a big tournament . It was great to be back. Only one person being negative about me is not that important because I have hundreds of people that are giving me love, so I will take that.”
“Really she’s earned the right to do whatever she wants to do. If she wants to play another 10 years, that’s great. If she wants to never play again, that’s also great. I mean, she’s 43 years old. She’s a legend of the game. She’s won so much. I think it’s amazing to see Venus Williams still out there,” she said.
