By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday, March 4, 2022
Former World No.19 Varvara Lepchenko has been handed a four-year suspension, backdated to last August ー she will be eligible to return to the tour in August of 2025, when she will be 39.
Lepchenko tested positive for a banned stimulant (sample tested positive for metabolites of adrafinil and/or modafinil) after a first-round loss at the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest last year, and was provisionally suspended. She will be appealing the result, which was handed out by an independent tribunal on Friday after they held a video hearing on February 17.
This is Lepchenko’s second doping violation but the tribunal is treating it as if it were her first, because she was eventually ruled to not be at fault for her positive meldonium test in 2016.
Lepchenko has previously played for the US Olympic team and the US Billie Jean King Cup team. She has reached the round of 16 at two different majors. After emigrating from Uzbekistan, she has lived in the United States since 2001 and gained citizenship in 2011.