The full written reasons behind Marketa Vondrousova’s four-year doping ban have been published, revealing that WhatsApp messages and the former Wimbledon champion’s own behaviour on the night of the incident fatally undermined her defence.
The independent tribunal handed the 26-year-old Czech player the sanction after she refused to allow a doping control officer (DCO) into her Prague apartment at 8pm in December 2025. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the ban length was set deliberately to match the penalty for a positive test.
“This is to ensure that anyone who is doping cannot serve a shorter ban simply by refusing to be tested,” the ITIA stated.
What the messages showed
Vondrousova messaged her boyfriend, fellow Czech player Andrew Paulson, shortly after the DCO rang her doorbell. “So like here is ringing some **** from the doping,” she wrote, a line the tribunal cited as evidence she had understood almost immediately who was at her door and why.
She had also spoken by phone to her agent, Enric Molina, before refusing the officer entry. The tribunal found that those exchanges, taken together, showed she had maintained a high level of cognitive function throughout the incident, directly contradicting her claim that an acute stress reaction had impaired her judgement.
Ten minutes after her initial refusal, Vondrousova left her building with her Italian greyhound, coming face to face with the DCO, who was still waiting outside. The officer warned her a final time that refusal would carry serious consequences. Vondrousova signed a form confirming her refusal and continued the dog walk.
She then messaged Molina: “She left.” She attached a picture of the completed form and added, “(T)his is completely f***ed up.” She later posted a statement on her Instagram Story that included a photograph of the DCO and tagged both the ITIA and the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Three defences, three rejections
Vondrousova offered three grounds for her refusal: that she felt unsafe when the DCO arrived outside her designated testing window; that the officer had not properly identified herself; and that the acute stress reaction had compromised her decision-making. The tribunal rejected all three.
On the safety argument, Vondrousova cited the 2016 attack on her compatriot Petra Kvitova, who was stabbed at home by a man posing as a repairman. The tribunal acknowledged that incident but noted Prague is consistently ranked among the safest cities in Europe. It also noted that Vondrousova herself had described her neighbourhood as a “nice area,” and found she had “exaggerated” the parallels with Kvitova’s ordeal. It added that her willingness to go outside and walk past the DCO sat awkwardly with a genuine fear for her safety, particularly given that she described her small dog as “not much of a scary dog.”
The medical evidence supporting the acute stress reaction claim also failed. Neither of the two doctors who had provided assessments of Vondrousova’s mental state made themselves available for cross-examination. The ITIA’s own expert cautioned that the retrospective diagnoses lacked contemporaneous supporting evidence.
The tribunal acknowledged the incident was “a very unfortunate manner in which the player made a decision in the heat of the moment” but said she had not offered “compelling justification” for the refusal.
The ITIA also argued that Vondrousova, who has taken 83 tests over eight years, could not credibly claim ignorance of rules permitting out-of-hours testing. The organisation said it regularly communicates its “any time, any place” guidelines to players in the testing pool.
Vondrousova’s ban began on 22 June 2026. She has the right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. If the sanction runs its full course, she will be 30 years old when she returns to the WTA tour.
