Iga Swiatek dismisses fitness concerns ahead of Australian Open, blames ‘tiredness’ for late medical time-out in defeat

Speaking ahead of the Grand Slam, she dismissed fitness concerns, revealing that she was ‘just tired’ in her defeat to Gauff. “For sure, I wasn’t fresh today, but I’ll be good,” she said.

“Nothing happened really, like I was just tired.”

Swiatek, recently served a one-month doping ban, after testing positive for a prohibited substance (trimetazidine), in an out-of-competition sample in August. Then the ITIA accepted her defence that the test result returned positive due to contamination of a regulated non-prescription medicine melatonin, which was manufactured and sold in Poland.

“At the beginning of the tournament especially has been pretty big but, honestly, it’s all good,” he said.

“I’m for sure happy because I played some heavy hitters as well this week, and also some girls that played topspin, and I was able to against both (styles) play really great tennis.

“Today I wasn’t able to give 100 per cent. Coco also played amazing and she’s, for sure, improving. But I’m really happy with the week and I feel like the things I worked on really improved. But, on the other hand, this week before the Australian Open is a different story so I’m going to do everything step by step and continue the work that I’ve been doing,” she added.

Swiatek reportedly consumed the melatonin medication due to jet lag and sleep issues, and the ITIA termed it as unintentional. Her one-month ban officially ended on December 4, 2024.

Speaking on Swiatek’s doping case recently, ITIA chief Karen Moorhouse said, “In relation to Swiatek, the contaminated product was a medication. So it was not unreasonable for a player to assume that a regulated medication would contain what it says on the ingredients. Therefore, the level of fault she could accept was at the lowest level as there was very little more she could have done reasonably to mitigate the risk of that product being contaminated. Halep’s contamination was not a medication. It was a collagen supplement and her level of fault was found to be higher.”