Vondroušová on her doping ban: I am still being tested in Prague

Czech tennis player Markéta Vondroušová, who received a four-year ban in June for refusing a doping test, has described on social media what life under the suspension is like. She cannot play, train or even attend a tournament as a spectator, yet the drug tests go on.

Her partner is also a professional tennis player, and Vondroušová still travels with him to competitions. “While he plays, I sit in the hotel room and watch his matches on a screen. Instead of standing by the court and cheering him on,” she wrote. She said she cried at the first tournament after the sanction was imposed: it was hard to be so close to something that had been part of her world all her life and to no longer be a part of it.

What is banned and what remains

The ban goes beyond matches: the player cannot compete in tournaments, train at her club or use its facilities. She is still subject to anti-doping control and every day names a one-hour window when she is available to inspectors. “And I am still being tested, even though I am not competing,” she noted.

Vondroušová is also hurt by people's reactions. She stressed that every doping test she has taken has come back negative, which makes it all the harder to read her being called a “doper” and to hear people from the tennis world say she looks as though she has been smoking weed somewhere.

Why she was punished

The athlete received the four-year term in June over a refused doping test in December 2025. The inspector came to her Prague apartment at around eight in the evening, outside the window she had declared in advance. The player did not let her in, later came out to the building entrance, but did not give a sample. She explained this by concerns for her safety and by her belief that the inspector had not presented proper documents. A few days later, at a new check, Vondroušová let the inspector in and took a test with a negative result, but an independent tribunal did not accept her arguments.

The athlete appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). If the appeal is unsuccessful, she will be able to return to the court only in June 2030.

Around Prague, based on reporting by sport.cz