Andre Agassi says tennis is a front-runner in the fight against drugs in sport and that he’d been tested 13 times in the past 12 months.
Agassi, an eight-time Grand Slam champion, will begin the defence of his Australian Open title next week in Melbourne. The season-opening tennis major has been overshadowed by a doping scandal involving Canadian-born Briton Greg Rusedski.
”One of the things we can say is that our sport is the leading — or one of the leading — in drug testing,” Agassi told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Agassi said that the ATP Tour’s drug-testing policy gave him confidence that his rivals weren’t unfairly aided by performance-enhancing drugs.
”I have full confidence I am playing someone who is clean,” he said.
World number one Andy Roddick said he’d been tested at least 17 times in 2003.
Rusedksi announced last week he tested positive for the steroid nandrolone in July, but vowed to prove his innocence at a February 9 hearing in Montreal.
Rusedski insisted any traces of nandrolone from a doping sample taken on July 23 in Indianapolis must have come from supplements he received from ATP trainers.
The ATP ordered its trainers to stop dispensing supplements or vitamins to players last May because it couldn’t prove that those supplements didn’t contain traces of banned substances. — Sapa-AP
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