By Tennis Now | @Tennis_Now | Thursday February 22, 2024
Simona Halep’s career has been knocked off the rails by a doping violation and the Romanian, off the court since she tested positive for a banned substance at the 2022 US Open, has taken her share of the punishment.
Talking to Andy Roddick on his new podcast, Served with Andy Roddick, Kim Clisters expressed the opinion that it’s not fair to point all the blame in Halep’s direction (the situation starts at about 1:12 of the episode).
"To me the biggest red flag is the team," Clijsters said. "I get it, I get that she took the supplements… I have a really hard time that there is no consequence for the team, that it's just the athlete."
Patrick Mouratoglou, who started working with Halep about six months prior to her violation, later admitted that he couldn’t help but feel responsible for the Romanian’s situation.
“There is no way to know it, but I feel responsible for what happened because it’s my team, so basically me, who brought her this collagen," Mouratoglou said in a post last November.
Roddick points out that Mouratoglou took control of Halep’s team and made the decisions about the supplements in question (collagen), but will not be punished at all.
“She basically flipped her whole team and he was kind of in control, brought in his people, but it stinks because she's going to end up being potentially the poster child of a conversation,” Roddick said.
The former World No.1 also was critical of Mouratoglou for not getting coming out in support of Halep sooner.
“If I would have been a part of giving someone something, and them trusting me with it, I would have been out there trying to take as many bullets as possible for that person, saying ‘I did this, I gave it to her, it’s my fault,’” Roddick said. “I understand that she’s the only one that can pay the price – it’s in her body and it potentially benefitted her, but yes, it is a weird thing.”
Clijsters expressed sympathy for Halep. She says that giving up control is something that happens to a lot of players on the WTA Tour, where coaches and their cohorts can be manipulative.
"His team proposed for her to take and that she takes it without any hesitation, where you trust your team and where you trust the people around," said Clijsters. "You believe that they know that they're doing the right thing and then this happens to her.
"In a situation like this, for women especially, when you have coaches that take over your team where they – I mean, I call it manipulating, I don't find another word for it, for taking control of everything that happens around an athlete I do have a hard time.
“It sits so wrong with me. I’m trying to put myself in the situation of understanding,” she said. "I'm curious just for the future of the WTA. This can happen over and over again we've seen it in the past where you have these coaches that come in and they take over the life of a player and they want to be in control of everything and everybody that talks to the athlete. It's definitely a huge red flag, and I feel really bad for Simona, but again, we don’t know the whole truth,” Clijsters said.