The Court of Arbitration for Sport has reduced two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep's four-year doping ban to nine months.
The decision means that Romanian Halep, former world number one, 32, can return to tennis immediately.
She feared her career would be over if the original decision was upheld.
While her case was partially upheld, Cass ruled that Halep “on the balance of probabilities” did not intentionally take Roxadustat.
Halep, winner of the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019, has always insisted on her innocence.
She tested positive for roxadustat – an anti-anemia drug that stimulates the production of red blood cells in the body – after the US Open in 2022.
She was separately charged in May 2023 when irregularities were also discovered in her biological sports passport.
“After carefully considering all the evidence before it, the tribunal decided that Ms Halep had proven, on the balance of probabilities, that Roxadustat entered her body through the consumption of a contaminated supplement which she used in the days shortly before 29 August 2022.”
“The drug Roxadostat, as detected in her sample, came from this contaminated product.
“As a result, the jury decided that Ms. Halep had also proven, on the balance of probabilities, that her violations of the anti-doping rules were not intentional.
“Although the CAS panel found that Ms. Halep bore some level of fault or negligence for her violations, because she did not exercise sufficient care when using the Keto MCT supplement, it concluded that she bore no significant fault or negligence.”
