Red hot Wimbledon tennis babe retired at 27 amid cocaine and affair claims

March 2024 · 2 minute read

Former pro tennis player Martina Hingis had to retire at 27 owing to cocaine allegations.

The Swiss, 41, won 25 Grand Slams – including Wimbledon – during her illustrious career. But the good days were brought to an end in 2007. At 27 years old, Hingis called a press conference to announce that she was under investigation for testing positive for benzoylecgonine, which is a metabolite of cocaine. "I have tested positive but I have never taken drugs and I feel 100% innocent," she said. "I am frustrated and angry. I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous, that I have decided to confront it head-on by talking to the press."

She was tested at Wimbledon and her sample contained an estimated 42 nanograms per millilitre of benzoylecgonine. The International Tennis Federation's report found it was a low amount and she did try and appeal on the basis it was contamination, rather than her using anything illegal.

READ MORE: Wimbledon staff say sex-mad punters' bonkathons in quiet rooms are 'impossible to police'

However, her appeal did not win and the following year a tribunal suspended Hingis from the sport for two years. She retired from professional tennis as a result.

The former sports star also caught the headlines after her husband found her in bed with another man. French equestrian Thibault Hutin claimed she was a serial cheater and found her laying with someone else just a year after she was married.

He said: "Martina has a very personal conception of morality. She has always been like that; I think she has always been unfaithful to her boyfriends."

In 2018, Martina married former sports physician Harald Leemann and they have a daughter together.

Of her playing days, she told ESPN: "My weapon on the tennis court is and always was one single thing: the game, the ingenuity on court. And for this style of tennis, there is only one performance enhancer - the love of the game."

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