Kazakhstan teenager and tennis player Arsan Arashov has been slapped with a two-year suspension for a doping offence, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) has confirmed.
The 17-year-old, who is ranked a lowly 1,729 in the world, tested positive for the banned substance Meldonium when playing in an ITF event in Gandia, Spain, in July last year. His suspension has been backdated to September 2016.
Meldonium shot into the limelight when former world number one and Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova was handed a two-year suspension after testing positive for the same substance at the 2016 Australian Open, Sport24 reported.
The substance was placed on the banned list by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) last year. However, the five-time Grand Slam champion had insisted that she had been taking the drug since 2006 legally for years due to health concerns.
Later, her doping suspension was slashed to 15 months on appeal and now she is due to return to the sport in Stuttgart beginning April 26.
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