Nick Kyrgios creates controversy after making doping accusations against Andy Roddick

Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios has slammed former US Open champion Andy Roddick for defending Iga Swiatek, after the World No 2 had recently accepted a one-month suspension by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) after failing a doping test.

Swiatek tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) in August this year, before the Cincinnati Open. The positive test was because the ITIA found Swiatek’s non-prescription medicine melatonin to be contaminated. Swiatek took the said medicine due to problems with jet lag and sleeping.

Iga Swiatek | What is the substance at the heart of Iga Swiatek doping controversy and how serious is the offence?

A social media user on “X” had stated in a now-deleted post that Roddick was someone who supported doping during his career and that he himself was a someone who had doped. To this, Nick quote tweeted and wrote “Hahaha most likely”.

“I can’t call it doping. It’s like taking a melatonin for jet lag at 2:30 in the morning in Cincy and having… think about how many things had to go wrong for Iga Swiatek to get popped for melatonin and something that was contaminated,” Roddick had earlier said on his podcast Andy Roddick.

“It’s just unfortunate for her [Swiatek] obviously. A negative test in Paris at the Olympics, negative tests in New York. So this isn’t some ongoing thing. It just sucks. It just sucks ‘cause the headlines people will say, the dumbest people in our sports, ‘Ah, doping!’ I’ve taken melatonin before. Who’s to say ours weren’t contaminated and are we going to continue to clutch pearls about one billionth of a gram of something or contaminated melatonin that didn’t have any performance enhancement,” he had added.

Both Kyrgios and Roddick have had disagreements in the past as well. Earlier in 2024, the two were involved in a quarrel over the doping controversy surrounding Jannik Sinner . “All this talk of sinister things and preferential treatment… you’re a number on a bottle, you’re allowed to appeal during the appeal process until you’re guilty, so innocence until proven guilty is something we hear a lot. It didn’t come out until yesterday and then became a complete firestorm,” Roddick had said after Sinner had tested positive for doping in August.

“Do you understand how quickly this stuff exits your system? Cream, gummies literally hours. Ridiculous statement,” Nick said, responding to Roddick’s statement.