Tennis Hall of Famer Andy Roddick Weighs in on Jannik Sinner’s Positive Steroid Tests

Former 2003 U.S. Open champion Andy Roddick has weighed in on the top issue plaguing the tennis world this week, as the qualifiers for the 2024 vintage of the final Grand Slam of the year tip off in New York.

It was revealed that, back in March during the Indian Wells tournament, trace elements of the anabolic steroid Clostebol, a banned substance, were found in two drug tests for world No. 1 Jannik Sinner. The 23-year-old claimed his first major with an Australian Open victory in January. He advanced all the way to the French Open semifinals earlier this summer, followed by a Wimbledon quarterfinals berth. He had to withdraw from the Paris Olympics due to tonsilitis.

Ultimately, the International Tennis Integrity Agency cleared Sinner of any wrongdoing and will not suspend him.

The news broke following Sinner’s latest tour victory, a Cincinnati Open title.

Read More: World’s Top-Ranked Tennis Player Tests Positive for Steroids Ahead of US Open

The 41-year-old Roddick, once a world No. 1 himself, is skeptical that Sinner or his handlers would deliberately jeopardize the Italian superstar’s future with such a minuscule amount of the drug.

Roddick, now a Tennis Channel podcaster and host of the show “Served With Andy Roddick,” weighed in on Sinner’s recent trouble during a fresh episode.

The former superstar retired in 2012 and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012.

“There’s also a lot of noise online, basically saying, ‘Well, then take the Australian Open away in January. Take away his win. How can he do that? He beat my favorite player there.’ Stop. You get tested at every Slam. So there is no chance he was not clean at [the] Australian Open if he tested as much as he did… Okay, so this is from Darren Cahill, who I was on text with this morning, who is Jannik Sinner’s coach, [wrote], ‘The facts are really clear. A challenging couple weeks with everybody being asked about it… The amount in his system is one billionth of a gram, or 58,000 times smaller than a grain of salt.”

“I can’t for the life of me think that he would do it, he would dope that badly to risk everything,” Roddick opined. “This is the s——st doping effort that I’ve ever seen in my life if that’s actually what it is.”

Though Roddick won just one Grand Slam, he suffered from the bad luck of playing during one of the craziest eras in men’s tennis, as he came up against the immovable object that was the “Big Three” of superstars Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, all of whom won at least 20 titles. Roddick for a time held the fastest serve in the history of the game, at a blistering 155 miles per hour run.

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