BUCHAREST: Former tennis world number one Simona Halep announced her retirement on Tuesday after her first-round defeat at the WTA Cluj-Napoca tournament in her native Romania.

The 33-year-old lost 6-1, 6-1 to 72nd-ranked Italian Lucia Bronzetti.

“I don’t know if it is with joy or sadness that I speak to you but I made this decision in my soul and conscience, I have always been lucid. My body no longer follows, but today I wanted to play and say my goodbyes on the court,” Halep told the Romanian crowd.

The two-time Grand Slam champion, who had been working to re-establish herself after a doping ban, pulled out of Australian Open qualifying last month citing pain in her knee and shoulder.

Halep returned to tennis in March last year after her career had been on hold since October 7, 2022, after testing positive for roxadustat at the US Open.

The winner of the 2018 French Open and 2019 Wimbledon singles titles was then caught up in a second affair, over “irregularities” in the data of her biological passport.

She was handed a four-year ban by the ITIA, but successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), arguing her positive test for roxadustat — used to treat anaemia and banned as a blood doping agent — was the result of a tainted supplement.

She denied knowingly doping and her ban was reduced from four years to nine months.

But she never managed to regain the level that allowed her to rise to the top of the world rankings in October 2017, a position she occupied for a total of 64 weeks in her career.

Halep won 24 WTA titles over her 19-year career including the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019.

She also played in three other Grand Slam finals — the French Open in 2014 and 2017 and the Australian Open in 2018.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2025