Simona Halep’s incredible prize money, her breast reduction sacrifice and that failed drug test

Simona Halep has called time on her tennis career and her prize money haul confirms she will be remembered as one of the game’s all-time greats.
Young girls from Romania have to fight harder than most to reach the top, as their national tennis federation does not have the financial firepower required to propel a player to the top of the sport.
Yet Halep got to the promised land in tennis as she won the French Open and Wimbledon titles and also claimed the world No 1 ranking in a career that gave her so much.
Her formative days were hampered by an unfortunate challenge that required a huge sacrifice as she underwent breast reduction surgery in a bid to improve her mobility on court.
“My ability to react quickly was worse and my breasts made me uncomfortable,” she said as she looked back on the surgery. “It’s the weight that troubles me.
“When I did it, I did it for tennis. Doing that was really important to be No 1.
“I didn’t like them in my everyday life, either. I would have gone for surgery even if I hadn’t been a sportswoman.”
Her gamble paid off as Halep’s improved mobility around the court saw he make a successful leap onto the pro circuit, winning her first WTA Tour final on clay in Germany in 2013 and going on to win 24 career titles.
She lost her first three Grand Slam finals in agonisingly close contests and then won her first major at the French Open in 2018, beating America’s Sloane Stephens in the final.
Halep then cemented her legacy with a 6-2 6-2 demolition of Serena Williams in the 2019 Wimbledon final, with her final career earnings total of $40,232,663 highlighting the scale of her achievements.
It is a prize money total that puts her in third place on the tennis rich list, with only Serena and Venus Williams ahead of her in the all-time prize money charts.
Of course, there is another story that Halep will be remembered for, even though she wishes it never happened.
Halep as banned for four years in September 2023, just over a year after she tested positive for roxadustat, a drug used to treat anaemia, as well as irregularities in her blood passport.
More Tennis News
Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek failed drug tests – inside story on tennis anti-doping programme
The suspension was reduced to nine months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, by which point she had already been out of the game for nearly a year and a half, after they accepted her explanation of a contaminated supplement.
Halep’s anger and frustration over the delay in her appeals were exasperated by the eventual conclusion that her failed doping test was due to a contaminated substance.
When world No 1’s Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek also failed doping tests last year and received much more lenient punishment, Halep was quick to join the debate over perceived different treatments.
Writing on Instagram, Halep said: “I sit and try to understand but it is really impossible for me to understand something like this.
“I sit and wonder, why such a big difference in treatment and judgment? I can’t find, and I don’t think there can be a logical answer. It can only be bad will on the part of ITIA, the organisation that did absolutely everything to destroy me despite the evidence.
“I have always believed in good, I have believed in the fairness of this sport, I have believed in kindness.
“The injustice that was done to me was painful, is painful and maybe will always be painful. How is it possible that in identical cases that happened at about the same time (of the season), ITIA has completely different approaches, to my detriment?”
Halep’s persistent claims that she was treated differently to Sinner and Swiatek were answered by International Tennis Integrity Agency CEO Karen Moorhouse, as she spoke to Tennis365 in December.
“It’s the same rules and the same processes for every player,” begins Moorhouse, speaking to Tennis365 in an exclusive interview.
“All cases are different and each case turns on individual facts. Cases can also be quite complex, so it isn’t right to look at two headlines and draw comparisons between two cases as the detail is always the key part.
“Let’s take Swiatek and Halep. The CAS tribunal found that her (Halep’s) supplement was contaminated. So just in relation to that finding, they said nine months (suspension).
“That was the tribunal deciding on the objective fault she had and the subjective fault she should have. So what should she have done in relation to the product that was found to be contaminated?
“In relation to Swiatek, the contaminated product was a medication. So it was not unreasonable for a player to assume that a regulated medication would contain what it says on the ingredients.
“Therefore, the level of fault she could accept was at the lowest level as there was very little more she could have done reasonably to mitigate the risk of that product being contaminated.
“Halep’s contamination was not a medication. It was a collagen supplement and her level of fault was found to be higher.
“The key point here is it’s rare to find two cases that are the same they will all turn on their particular facts.”
Halep will always dispute the way her doping story was handled and it will leave a mark on her tennis story, but she heads into retirement having acievement more than only a handful of players in the history of the sport.
READ NEXT: Simona Halep should be remembered for more than a failed drug test