Parikshit Somani banned four years over trimetazidine: the case file of a suspension with no grey zone

On 5 November 2026, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) published a short statement with no room in it for sentiment: Parikshit Somani, a 26-year-old Indian player, was banned for four years, running through September 2029. The positive sample was collected at a lower-tier event in Astana, Kazakhstan, in 2026. The substance was trimetazidine, the active ingredient in a class of angina medication.

For a player whose career-high ranking is No. 256 in doubles, four years amounts to a full stop written in ink that cannot be erased.

I read the public file on this case twice. The first time to grasp the facts. The second time to look for the place where the numbers fail to match the wording. Data whispers. Anyone willing to listen hears an entire match — and in this instance, an entire legal system.

CONTEXT: A TIER OF THE SPORT WITH NO DATA

Somani is not a name audiences in Melbourne or Ho Chi Minh City remember. He competed mainly at ITF World Tennis Tour and ATP Challenger level. At that level, total prize money for an ITF World Tennis Tour event typically sits between 15,000 and 25,000 US dollars for the whole men's draw, and a doubles player reaching the second round can go home with a few hundred dollars after travel costs.

At that same level there is no Hawk-Eye, no GPS positional data, no rally-by-rally baseline statistics updated game by game. Based on my experience following matches at ITF and Challenger level, I can say it plainly: this is the tier where match data is close to zero. The only thing recorded with real rigour is the urine sample.

That is a paradox I have never found comfortable. Tennis's anti-doping system runs on thousands of samples a year, but it runs on a database parallel to the match database. At Grand Slam level, people know exactly how many metres a player covered across a twelve-shot rally. At ITF level, people know one thing for certain: positive, or negative.

The ITIA was established in 2026, taking over integrity work from the ATP, the WTA, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the four Grand Slams. One feature of how it operates is that it publishes decisions with reasons, but does not publish the full hearing transcript. So when the ITIA writes that an independent tribunal rejected Somani's explanation, we only get what it chose to quote.

Before you believe a number, ask where it came from.

TRIMETAZIDINE AND THE THREE CASES THAT SHAPED HOW IT IS READ

Trimetazidine, usually abbreviated TMZ, sits in class S4.4 — "metabolic modulators" — on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List. It is banned both in and out of competition. In medicine it is used to treat stable angina; its mechanism is tied to energy metabolism in heart muscle cells, which is exactly why sport's regulators watch it.

One technical detail decides this entire case: TMZ is a non-threshold prohibited substance, so any detected concentration is enough to produce an adverse finding. There is no limit to compare against, no buffer zone between "contamination" and "use". Many other substances on the list do have thresholds — salbutamol is the best-known example — and for those, the central question is "how much". For TMZ, the central question is "by what route".

Three major cases have attached themselves to TMZ. In 2026, Chinese swimmer Sun Yang was banned for three months after testing positive for TMZ. In 2026, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Kamila Valieva — then 15 — tested positive for TMZ. In January 2026, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) handed her a four-year ban.

And now Somani. The same substance. The same length of suspension.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE AUGUST HEARING

Somani explained the positive test as cross-contamination through food prepared by a family member who was taking medication containing TMZ. In other words: the relative's medicine got into the meal, and the meal got into his body.

The tribunal did not accept it. The ITIA quoted the conclusion that the food-contamination theory was "scientifically implausible", "highly speculative" and "unconvincing". The agency also stated that Somani's side did not prove the source of the alleged contamination.

Those three adjectives deserve a pause. "Scientifically implausible" is a judgement about pharmacokinetics — the concentration needed to generate an adverse finding, the half-life, the metabolic pathway of TMZ in the human body. "Highly speculative" is a judgement about logic. "Unconvincing" is a judgement about testimony.

And here is the least discussed part. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, to receive a reduced sanction in a contamination case, an athlete must establish the specific source of the prohibited substance in their body. The burden of proof sits with the athlete, not with the investigating body.

A 26-year-old player at Challenger level has to accomplish what leading laboratories typically spend months accomplishing: tracing a trace amount of an active substance through a family's food chain, with full diaries, receipts and control samples. In most cases, that task has no solution.

During the suspension, Somani may not play, may not coach and may not attend any event organised by World Tennis, the WTA, the ATP, the Grand Slams or any national federation.

THE CONTRARIAN ANGLE: THE SAME DEFENCE, THE SAME OUTCOME

The Valieva case and the Somani case share a single architecture. Both tested positive for TMZ. Both offered a food-contamination explanation — for Valieva, a strawberry dessert prepared by her grandfather, who was taking medication containing TMZ. Both received four years.

What I take from that overlap differs from the popular conclusion.

The familiar narrative runs like this: the anti-doping system protects its stars, and when a star is caught, the sanction gets negotiated. The Valieva case breaks that narrative — she had the most formidable legal team a teenage athlete could assemble, and still took the full four years. The Somani case breaks it in another direction: a No. 256 doubles player, with almost nothing to bargain with, took exactly four years.

Which means that at the system's top layer, differences in resources do not produce differences in outcome. That is a more encouraging signal than people usually concede. The sanctioning stage does not favour stars; it tilts toward the burden of proof, and that burden weighs the same on everyone.

But the price of that tilt is not the same for everyone. Valieva lost four years at 17. Somani loses four years at 26 — the age at which a doubles player normally enters the best phase of a career, if that career has a best phase at all. When he returns in September 2029, he will be 30.

Here I have to say something about how I read technical judgements. In football, the millimetre offside line turned referees into editors of the match: the technology arrived to reduce error, yet it created a zone in which a technical decision replaces the reality of the move. TMZ works on an almost opposite logic while producing a comparable consequence. A non-threshold prohibited substance leaves no millimetre zone to argue over — only a binary outcome. What gets lost here is the ability to distinguish a trace from an act, not precision.

Misread one variable and you lose your bearings for an entire year. In this case the misplaced variable is time: a sample collected in Astana in 2026, a hearing in August, a statement in November. That span consumes the whole of one person's remaining competitive life.

WHAT SHOULD EXIST: A CONTAMINATION BASELINE

Across two days of rereading the file, I kept returning to a question about data, and I admit up front that it may be wrong.

Tennis has a biological passport at the elite level. At ITF World Tennis Tour level, there is almost nothing comparable. So when a No. 256 player says he was cross-contaminated by a family meal, there is no baseline to check against. No dense enough series of prior reference samples. No data on background concentrations where he lives, how he eats, which medications circulate in his household.

In swimming, investigators such as Craig Lord spent years exposing governance gaps that make data unusable as evidence in the way science demands. In tennis, the equivalent gap sits at the bottom, and it is rarely discussed because almost nobody follows Challenger events except the people who genuinely need ranking points to live.

To separate a genuine wave of contamination from a genuine wave of use, tennis needs a baseline. Sanctions cannot produce that baseline. Only data can.

A season missing detail is like a match missing stoppage time.

ASSUMPTIONS THAT MAY BE WRONG

I have no access to the full transcript of the August hearing. I do not know the TMZ concentration in Somani's sample — and that number matters, because concentration is the variable that separates a contamination incident from deliberate use. I also do not know whether he will appeal to CAS, and if he does, whether the food-source argument will be reconsidered at another level.

There is another possibility I am obliged to leave open: that Somani's explanation is correct, that the contamination was real, and that the tribunal simply lacked enough data to believe it. In that scenario, four years is a systemic error, and at present there is no mechanism to correct it.

In 2026, when I wrote a prediction based on expected goals and was called a bookworm, I did not change my method, only my presentation. In 2026, when the crowd variable vanished from my home-advantage model, it took me three weeks to admit that my model was missing a variable, rather than football having changed. Those two lessons complement each other: scepticism is necessary, and a wrong model does not mean the world is wrong.

WHAT TO TRACK NEXT

Three signals worth setting a reminder for.

First, the tribunal's full reasoned decision. If the ITIA publishes it, it will reveal the measured concentration and the pharmacokinetic chain behind the "scientifically implausible" conclusion. That is verifiable data, and it would let readers judge for themselves rather than take something on trust.

Second, whether Somani appeals to CAS. An appeal would turn the matter from a press statement into a contestable file, and such files are usually where the system's technical gaps become clearest.

Third, and most important to me: whether tennis starts building baseline data at ITF level. If it does not, more names ranked 200, 300 and 400 will walk into this same trap — asked to prove something the system never gave them the tools to prove. Somani will no longer be playing professionally when his ban ends in September 2029. The number of people behind him at that level will not shrink.

Data whispers. The problem is that somebody has to do the work of collecting it, before the whisper becomes a verdict.