Notes on a Draw Sheet

The post-Wimby report: Novak stymies Federer's streak
Fed Cup picks: Russia, Spain & US; Tanner, Tauziat to return; ATP admits doping mess-up: Will Ulihrach sue?

By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net

Here's what should be taken out of gaggle of post Wimbledon tournament results: that Roger Federer can't win in Switzerland; that Gstaad champ Jiri Novak underachieves at the Slams; that Newport champ Robby "Driving Miss Minnie" Ginepri has top-30 stuff; that Bastad Champ Mariano Zabaleta will be heard from on hard courts this summer; that Palermo champ Dinara Safina continues to improve.

Marat's 17-year-old sister cracked the top-50 for the first time and has a decent upside. But, at this point, her fellow Russian teens, Vera Zvonareva and Svetlana Kuznetsova, appear to have bigger upsides.

Fed Cup picks: Russia, Spain & US
On to Fed Cup, where the Russians have the strongest squad on paper for the quarterfinals with Anastasia Myskina, Elena Dementieva, Elena Bovina and Zvonareva. They face Slovenia away, who for whatever reason, decided to play the tie on clay, when a grass court would have better suited Katerina Srebotnik's and Tina Pisnik's chances of pulling upsets.

With Silvia Farina-Elia out, take the US to dispatch Italy, Belgium (Clijsters and Justine Hennin-Hardenne) to trounce Daniela Hantuchova-less Slovakia, and Spain (Magui Serna, Virginia Ruano-Pasqual and the resurgent Maria Antonia Sanchez-Lorenzo (aka "The MASL – A League of Her Own") to stun France (Amelie Mauresmo and Nathalie Dechy) in Oviedo.

For those University of Tennessee Volunteers wondering whatever happened to Lookout Mountain, Roscoe Tanner, the former Australian Open champ and Wimbledon runner-up will be playing in the Men's 50s at the ITF Vets World Championships in Hanover, Germany, August 17-24.

Former top ten player Anders Jarryd has entered the men's 40s, while former ATP players Jan Gunnarsson and defending champion Pablo Arraya will also compete. Former Canadian Fed Cup player and current captain Rene Simpson will defend her women's 35 crown while Patricia Medrado, a former Brazilian Fed Cupper, is seeking to recapture her 45s title that she won in 2001.

The ITF Vets Team Competition takes place at seven venues across northern and central Germany.
Watch out for France: former Wimbledon finalist Nathalie Tauziat represents her country in the Suzanne Lenglen Cup (W35), while Nicole Jagerman does so for the Netherlands. Former Australian Open quarterfinalist Heidi Eisterlehner competes for Germany in the Maria Esther Bueno Cup (W50). On the men's side, the Tony Trabert Cup (M40) will see former Michiel Schapers playing for his country again.

ATP admits doping mess-up: Will Ulihrach sue?
After the ATP admitted that an electrolyte replacement product routinely given to players by tour trainers may have been contaminated by the steroid nandrolone, Czech player Bohdan Ulihrach's two-month suspension was lifted and now his attorney says he may seek damages for lost prize money.
Ulihrach was one of seven players who tested positive for nandrolone between last August and May but he was the only one who was given a two-year-ban, fined $43,770 and had ranking points taken away.

His suspension began May 2 and ended July 9, a period in which he could have earned into the six figures in prize money. The ATP has lifted the fine, but will not compensate him for lost earnings and doesn't expect a legal dispute.

"We are not considering that," said Mark Young, the ATP's executive vice president and general counsel. "When we are acting as the governing body seeking to enforce our rule and penalize a player, the benefit of the doubt has to go in favor of the player. The set of circumstances we had here raised the inference that our conduct may have been responsible for the positive test and the burden shift to us to demonstrate that it was not our conduct. We couldn't do that. That's different from the burden that might be imposed in a civil liability case where one would have to prove that we in fact did it to him. Based on the information we have, frankly, it's inconclusive. I don't think that anyone could prove that."

But Ulihrach's lawyer said that all options were being considered. "It is possible that we will file for lost earnings and damages to his good name," Jiri Balastik told a Czech newspaper.

Ulihrach added, "I'm happy that it has been shown that I never took anything. This whole ordeal was a period in my life that I wouldn't wish upon anyone."

ANOTHER PR NIGHTMARE
In yet another public relations nightmare for the beleaguered ATP, the tour said that its trainers no longer will dispense electrolyte tablets or other vitamin and mineral products. The players must be shocked with that development, since that's one of the reasons why they are paying trainers: to administer to them when they are ill.

"Athletes would not be happy at all that they can't take any supplements or they can't be helped," said Rich Young, who the ATP brought in to investigate the finding and who serves as an arbitrator for the Court of Arbitration for Sport. "I hear from athletes all the time, 'When you say all you can tell me is just say no; that's not an acceptable answer.' We need a better one. I agree with them. That's why you got to get the 19-nors off the market. It's silly that I can give my wife and kids vitamins and mineral replacement products, but if I had an elite athlete in the family, they'd be crazy to take it."

While the discovery of nandro in a nutritional supplement should come as no surprise given how poorly regulated the industry is, what's somewhat stunning is how the ATP is trying to pass on some of the blame on to the players.

"The investigation confirmed that despite the ATP's repeated warnings to players about the potential risk of contamination of supplements, ATP trainers had been dispensing several vitamin and nutritional products, including electrolyte replacement tablets used to offset excessive and potentially dangerous loss of electrolytes such as sodium and chloride through sweat," the ATP said in a statement.

Young went further: "The problem in this instance with 19-nor androstedione is that there was an increased demand by the general public for products containing this and several years ago the warning to players in all sports was generally understood to be that you shouldn't take energy- or muscle-building powders because those powders were available over the counter with this prohibitive substance in it. Sometimes identified on the label; sometimes not. There were so many manufacturers making this type of product, they also made common vitamins and common mineral supplements and those things, even though they weren't intended to have any type of prohibitive substance in them, were at risk for contamination. The bottom line is that for the last two years we have warned players not to take any kind of supplement but our trainers did not understand that electrolyte tablets, mineral or vitamin supplements were the type of product that was also included in the category of products that were at risks."

ATP DOESN'T SEE GROUNDS FOR SUITS
FYI: the ATP believes that neither Petr Korda or Guillermo Coria – both who were suspended in the past for testing positive – now have disputes on their hands.

"The Korda case was not a low-level [of nandro] comparable to these cases," Mark Young said. "These cases were all 9 or under. The Korda case was between 50 and 100. So it's a completely different set of circumstances. In the Coria case, that case did involve a small amount of nandrolone metabolites that came from a contaminated supplement. However in that case, he identified the source of the contamination. It was a vitamin supplement that he had himself purchased and taken. So it's unrelated to this particular set of circumstances."

It appears it's time for World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to begin producing its own electrolyte replacement supplement so that athletes (including tennis players) can get what they need while their cramping.

"The whole Olympic movement prohibits nandrolone and it has a cutoff of two nanograms per mil for men," said Rich Young. "And in order to give an assurance you would have to have a great deal of control and confidence in the manufacturing process because working from the assumption that a few billionths of a gram can cause a positive test, you need to know that there are no 19-nors manufactured in the same facility as your supplement product and that all the ingredients in your supplement product meet the same test and that all the ingredients in whatever they made in the facility before they made your supplement product meet your same test. So you'd almost have to have a virgin manufacturing line."

Christiane Ayotte, professor and director of the IOC's Montreal Doping Control Laboratory, said athletes have become too dependent of the supplements in the first place.

"How many of those substances, miracle products, are really, really needed by the athlete? " she asked. "And the number would go from thousand to a handful of substances. And really what is the point? We must educate the athletes. All of us are talking as if it's really necessary to take a pill for this and that. That may not be the case so there's a huge job of education first. We should get rid of hormones being legally freely distributed for our self administration for the athlete and for the usual population, for sure, and we must push that industry to maybe have lower profits, but to regulate itself properly."