British tennis star slapped with four-year ban gutted as £15m court case thrown out
A banned British tennis player has failed in her legal battle against the WTA after testing positive for two prohibited substances. Tara Moore, who achieved a career-high ranking of 145th in 2017, received a four-year ban after traces of nandrolone and boldenone, both anabolic steroids, were found in a urine sample she submitted for testing in 2022. She was initially cleared a year later, with an independent tribunal ruling that the result was caused by eating contaminated meat while she was competing in Bogota, Colombia.
That decision was later appealed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) and their argument was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), who ruled that Moore couldn’t prove the sample was consistent with the ingestion of contaminated meat. Moore, who maintains that she has never knowingly taken any banned substances, responded by launching a £15million lawsuit against the WTA in New York, suggesting that negligence on their part had ruined her career.
She accused the governing body of failing to warn players about the risk of contaminated meat in Bogota, which led to her positive tests. Moore also argued that her initial exoneration was “improperly reversed by a CAS panel that applied incorrect legal standards”.
However, her case has now been thrown out by a New York judge, dismissing her £15m damages claim and ruling that the CAS decision should remain intact.
Daniel Weiss, the lawyer representing Moore, previously told The New York Post that she was a victim of a flawed anti-doping system.
He said: “Tara Moore is a victim twice over: first of the WTA’s negligence, and then of a fundamentally flawed anti-doping system that presumed she was guilty without any evidence of wrongdoing.
“All this petition asks is for a federal court to ensure Tara gets what she was always promised: a fair hearing based on evidence, not a presumption of guilt.”
Moore, meanwhile, wrote on social media last year: “I don’t need a panel to tell me I’m innocent. I know the integrity I bring, and I know I am innocent. I believe everyone over the past couple of years can see how subjective this process is.
“I have been the underdog. I have had my life as I knew it ripped away from me because the organisations and people in power failed to do what was right.
They may have taken my fight away on the court, yet my fight is not over, not for me or others like me. The anti-doping system is broken. I am proof of this. We need to fix it.
“Not for me as it’s too late, but for future players who find themselves in this unfortunate situation. I have so much more to say when the time is right.”
