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<\/p>\nSerena Williams and Simona Halep pose before the 2019 Wimbledon final<\/p>\n
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Tennis player Sorana Cirstea has accused Serena Williams of being \u201carrogant\u201d after the 23-time grand slam champion appeared to make a dig at Simona Halep following her recent doping ban.<\/p>\n
Halep, a former Wimbledon and French Open champion and world No 1, was banned for four years on two charges of breaching anti-doping regulations after testing positive for banned blood-booster roxadustat at the US Open last year. A tribunal upheld the Romanian\u2019s suspension and accused her of \u201clikely\u201d taking performance-enhancing drugs.<\/p>\n
Halep has strongly denied knowingly taking a banned substance and said she had evidence to show that small amounts of the anaemia drug entered her system from a licensed supplement that was contaminated.<\/p>\n
Following the news of Halep\u2019s ban, Williams cryptically tweeted: \u201c8 is a better number\u201d. Williams won seven Wimbledon titles, losing to Halep in the final in 2019.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Sport Romania, Halep\u2019s compatriot Cirstea said: \u201cSerena as a player was extraordinarily good. As a person, she always had this arrogance. She didn\u2019t accept when someone could beat her or took a title from her.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Halep said she will \u201cpursue all legal remedies against the supplement company in question\u201d, and Cirstea leapt to her defence, suggesting contamination was a viable explanation for the test results.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know Simona. I don\u2019t think she ever consciously doped. This suspension is for an innocent person,\u201d she said. \u201cI was afraid to take anything, I was afraid to take an aspirin. I\u2019m maybe a little paranoid, but it\u2019s no joke. It\u2019s every athlete\u2019s nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams also commented on a tweet by her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who reposted a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt with the slogan: \u201cKeeping kids off drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had worn the T-shirt at a match Williams was playing against Maria Sharapova, who at the time had returned from a 15-month doping ban. Williams responded to his caption \u201csome fashion is timeless\u201d with the reply: \u201cSeriously not out of style.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams gave birth to a baby girl last month almost exactly a year after her last match as a tennis player.<\/p>\n
Adira River Ohanian is the second child, and second daughter, for the 41-year-old Williams and her husband. Their first, Olympia, was born in 2017.<\/p>\n