Canas banned for two years for doping

Argentine world number 10 Guillermo Canas has been banned for two years for doping, men's tennis organisers the ATP said on Monday.

The baseliner was hit with the suspension from competition after he tested positive for the prohibited diuretic hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) at the ATP tournament in Acapulco, Mexico in February.

Canas must repay $276,070 in prize money and forfeit 525 singles and 95 doubles ranking points as part of the sanction. He will be eligible to return to competition on June 11, 2007.

The 27-year-old becomes the fourth Argentine to fall foul of doping tests in recent years after Juan Ignacio Chela, Guillermo Coria, who reached the final of Roland Garros in 2004, and this year's French Open finalist Mariano Puerta.

Chela was suspended for three months in 2001 after testing positive for the steroid methyltestosterone. Later that year Coria was banned for seven months and fined $98,500 after testing positive for nandrolone.

Puerta was suspended for nine months in 2004 after he was found to have the banned substance clenbuterol in his system during a doping test at a tournament in Chile in 2003.

Tennis has now signed up to the World Anti-Doping Agency's protocol which demands an automatic two-year ban for doping offences such as Canas's.

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Canas, winner of six singles titles and two doubles titles in his career, has not played since reaching the semi-finals of the Halle grasscourt tournament in the first week of June because of the investigation.

In June he protested his innocence.

"I've kept quiet for a long time because the ATP didn't allow me to speak," Canas said in respected newspaper La Nacion.

"I don't know how the rumours started and I'm not interested. Now, I've got chance to speak and I want people to know from my own mouth.

"I didn't want to go through this. I've never looked to take anything extra or anything which isn't permitted to gain an advantage in tennis. It's ugly and it's strange.

"In doping, there are a lot of medicines which give positive results but which are not drugs. A herb tea infusion can give a positive result.

"The matter of the positive is difficult. I don't know what happened. I've been over everything I've taken with my team and there is nothing which is prohibited. I trust the system. I hope it's a mistake and nothing more."

The ATP said on Monday that an independent Tennis Anti-Doping Program tribunal was convened in New York on July 21-22 to hear the player's appeal.

The tribunal ruled unanimously that Canas had committed a doping offence under the rules of the ATP.