
(Mariano Tammaro/Instagram)
–
Of all the tennis doping cases handled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that have been parsed and compared in the wake of the Jannik Sinner situation, one has hardly received any attention at all.
And yet, it involves a young Italian who had the same spray – Trofodermin – administered. By someone else. Just once. And it resulted in a suspension.
The player, Mariano Tammaro, was 17 at the time. And after the tribunal convened by the ITIA decided on a two-year suspension, an appeal to the CAS reduced it to 15 months.
There are relevant similarities and comparisons to Sinner’s story, even if every single case is different on its merits.
But it’s definitely food for thought, as Sinner’s case now winds its way through the CAS. Notably in the area of how much are the actions of support staff (and, in Tammaro’s case, parents) imputed to the player.
The story, in brief
Tammaro, an Italian junior who rose as high as No. 106 in the ITF rankings, fell injured his knee during training in late September, 2021.
It appears to have been quite a nasty gash. There was a lot of bleeding, and some gross, yellowy discharge that indicated it got infected.
The wound was originally addressed with hydrogen peroxide and gauze by Tammaro’s coach. After that, his father Marco rinsed it with hydrogen peroxide and dressed it twice a day.
But after a week, it was only getting worse.
So one night, after young Mariano returned home and took a shower after practice (he was due to play a J1 junior event later that week – only his second junior tournament at that level – and had continued to train), the story goes that his father came in to the bathroom with the Trofodermin spray.
Mr. Tammaro had been advised to use the spray by the family doctor the previous year when he had a similar gash on his own leg (from the testimony, he still had the scar), with the instructions to use it 2-3 times a day for several days.
Mariano’s mother had bought the spray. But the box with the “antidoping” logo along with the instruction leaflet were long gone.
Mariano, who had some knowledge of anti-doping because of his junior tournament experience, said he asked his father if he had checked the product.

As the testimony went, his father insisted that he had – and seemed annoyed by the very question, in that way that fathers can be when their children question them.
They used the spray once. And the next day, after a crust had formed on the cut, they never used it again.
After the trip to Croatia for the junior event, Mariano received a wild card into the qualifying at a Challenger in Napoli – which would be his first-ever professional match.
He lost in three sets to Jonas Forejtek, the former No. 1 junior from the Czech Republic who won the US Open juniors in 2019. But with that debut came an anti-doping test.
And the test was positive for Clostebol, which is the banned substance found in the Trofodermin spray that also led to Sinner’s travails.
Notably, the amount of Clostebol found in Tammaro’s case was ONE-THIRD the amount found in Sinner’s – 40 pg/ml versus 121 pg/ml.
Unlike Sinner, Tammaro did not ask for the expedited hearing to try to overturn the provisional suspension. And the procedure was a bit different, in that the tribunal asked for proof of the source of the contamination (which was supplied), and submitted an offer to resolve the matter without a tribunal hearing (See the case of Robert Farah, outlined below).
In the end, there was a hearing.

The hearing
The ITIA-convened tribunal, as is often the situation in the cases we’ve examined, was pretty strict on the details.
It considered Tammaro had VERY NARROWLY satisfied the burden that the anti-doping infraction was not intentional. But they considered that requirements for downgrading or eliminating the two-year ban had NOT been satisfied.
–They found his account of the one-time spraying “inconsistent and/or implausible” and they considered there was a risk the stories of both Tammaro and his parents had been choreographed to take the onus off the kid.
–They wondered why the spray was only used once, when the recommended use was several times a day for several days.
–They noted that while the father and son’s stories matched up, the mother’s story differed in some aspects (even though those details were not, in the end, material).
Ultimately, they considered his fault to “be at the very upper limit of obliviousness or carelessness”, that his age and inexperience were irrelevant because the test to determine fault is objective, and those were “subjective” factors. They also judged the assertion of the father’s parental authority in just going in and spraying the knee didn’t excuse Mariano’s “lack of care”.
They considered the parents’ fault “clearly significant, as they failed to take any of the clear and obvious precautions that any reasonable person would take in the same set of circumstances.”
The pointed out that while Mariano claimed he “had no plans to compete” at the time, and was therefore “out of competition”, the truth was that he was headed to Croatia for the junior tournament just a few days later.
In the end – and this is material to the Sinner case:
“It was the Player’s burden of proof to show, by a balance of probability, that he bore no fault or negligence. But even if the Panel were to accept the version presented by the Player and his parents, the fault of the parents would still be imputed to the Player.”
And so, the ITF panel issued a two-year suspension.
The appeal
The CAS, on appeal, was skeptical about some parts of the Tammaro story.
Notably why thespray was only used once, and why it took so long for the parents to remember using it, after their doctor told them to search the medicines in the house. Given the drama about the wound they described at the time, and the fact that their son didn’t use medication, often, that seemed dodgy.
But unlike the ITIA tribunal, the CAS found the inconsistencies “peripheral”, and not that unusual when you’re recalling facts months later. Not to mention nuance getting lost in translation from Italian to English.
Unlike the tribunal, they also considered it plausible that the parents hadn’t discussed the treatment of the wound extensively with their teenaged son, before the father applied the spray.
But the CAS did consider that even if Mariano didn’t have the opportunity to discuss the spray with his father before it was applied, he did have “ample time” afterwards – and before he played the Challenger.
But Mariano did “not even think to conduct the most cursory of investigations to find out what had been used on him and did not conduct any such investigation”. He also didn’t consult his sports doctor or his coach to ask them if they were familiar with it.
Mariano did ask his father what he had applied to the wound, and whether the spray bottle bore the “anti-doping pictogram” (It did not, as we now know; only the box does).
So the CAS found Mariano’s objective degree of fault fell into the “normal degree”, which begins with an 18-month sanction. They did consider his age, and that he would be hard-pressed to stand up to his father and “question his authority”.
Also, at the time of the positive test he was under 18, and therefore a “protected person” even if that protection ended the minute he began competing at the Challenger.
So in the end, the CAS reduced the penalty from two years to 15 months.
The parents
The CAS panel did come down on the parents.
“In the view of the Panel, the objective and subjective fault of the parents is more severe than the fault of the Player, because (i) they decided to apply the Trofodermin spray on the Player, (ii) the Father applied the Trofodermin spray to the Player without the latter’s consent, and (iii) they did not carry out sufficient anti-doping checks before, during and after the application of the spray.
“However, under the particular circumstances of the present case, the fault of the parents cannot increase the fault of the Player.
“The present case must be distinguished from cases in which a prohibited substance is administered by a physician or coach without disclosure. The reason being that unlike in the case at hand, where the parents of the athlete intervened sua sponte, athletes are responsible for their choice of medical personnel and for advising the personnel appropriately. The same goes for the sabotage of athletes’ food or drink by a coach or a family member, because the athletes are responsible for what they ingest and to whom they grant access to their food or drink. Thus, this case is different from (Sara) Errani, where the CAS imputed the fault by the athlete’s mother to the athlete “because she entrusted her mother to prepare the meal she ate.”
The Robert Farah case
It’s worth adding here that retired Colombian doubles star Robert Farah, who tested positive for boldenone and a metabolite of Boldenone, in Oct. 2019 and was suspended on Jan. 21, 2020 when he was already in Brisbane, was reinstated mere weeks later. His defence was that he ate 500—600 grams of sirloin steak at his mother’s house the previous night, which had been contaminated with the Boldenone.
Farah chose not to apply for the expedited hearing, as Sinner did. But he also came to a resolution with the ITIA without a hearing with a tribunal.
Despite the numerous cases of South American beef being contaminated with steroids, Farah testified he didn’t know there was significant risk, and had never seen the statement released by the Colombian Olympic Committee a year before about all this. The ITF bought this story, because Farah didn’t live in Colombia and spent most of the year on the road anyway.
(Given Farah is an Olympic athlete, that stretches credulity a little, but the previous meat contamination cases involving WADA referred to contaminated meat from other countries – notably Mexico).
But Farah was able to confirm – at lightning-quick speed – that his mother had bought the steak. He was able to get the supermarket to source the beef to one of 15 cattle ranches. He was able to get a senior Colombian government official to provide a sworn statement about the legality of Boldenone in Colombia and that “some livestock farms” in the regions where those 15 cattle ranches were located have used boldenone with their cattle.
He also was able to get testimony from a “senior representative of a Colombian cattle trade and lobbying organization” that it was common. And from a cattle farmer in the same area as those 15 cattle ranches (but not one of those specific ranches) that he’d used Boldenone to fatten his cattle for some 15 years.
He was able to get a list of the 59 products containing Boldenone available for sale in Colombia.
He was able to get a statement from the general manager of the Colombian Agricultural Institute that a lot of ranchers don’t abide by the rules about not using the products on cattle within 30 days of slaughter, which means those products remain in residue form in the beef the consumers buy.
He also was able to get a statement from a toxicology expert about the levels of Boldenone present in Colombian cattle.
The ITF requested additional information and documents from Farah about the supplements he’d taken the previous six months, and the receipts. Which he provided quickly.
With all that, the ITF determined that Farah “bore No Fault of Negligence”.
And all of this was handled, including the writing of the 11-page report, in the space of THREE WEEKS.
Farah, who ended up missing the Australian swing, was able to get right back to work.
It puts into perspective the speed with with Sinner was able to get a relatively small collection of information together, notably the testimony of his team.
The postscript
Mariano Tammaro was eligible return to action in March, 2023. He turned the page on the juniors and played his second career pro tournament the last week of April, 2023.
He gave an interview about the anti-doping drama here although the questions weren’t exactly … hard-hitting and the writer insists Tammaro “demonstrated the groundlessness of the accusations in several trials”. Sigh.
Since then, he’s hardly stopped. He’s played 43 tournaments in less than 18 months, mostly at the entry-level $15K tournaments in the Futures factories in Monastir and elsewhere.
He has made a few finals in both singles and doubles.

His total prize money earned for those 43 tournaments has been … $16,465.
Tammaro’s currently singles ranking is No. 658, slightly down from a career high of No. 630 reached a few weeks ago.
He most recently reached the doubles final at a $15K in Monastir, Tunisia last week and is there again this week.

More Stories
A tale of two comebacks: Halep and … Kvitova
ATP Rankings Report – As of Feb. 2, 2025
WTA Rankings Report – As of Feb. 3, 2025