Naomi Osaka has revealed she endured a ‘scary’ wake-up call at 5am in Paris to be drug tested.
She was targeted by anti-doping control before the French Open.
She told reporters: “I honestly don’t know the rules about talking about anti-doping. Am I allowed to say whatever I want?
“I don’t know. They’re kind of scary. Yeah, for me, anti-doping is like – I don’t have a great relationship with them, just because they always come and take blood and urine, which I don’t know if that disgusts people to say, but whatever, and my veins are, like, very notoriously hard to find.
“One person once told me it was like a Japanese thing. I don’t know if that’s accurate. Yeah, so they come at 5am and ‘stick’ me multiple times.
“Usually they can’t find my veins, so they have three attempts to find it. Sometimes they can’t find it.
“They’re like, ‘oops, sorry, let me try this arm, let me try this arm, let me try this arm’. I always have to tell them ‘hey, my playing arm is my right arm, I prefer the left, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah’.
“And today was kind of scary, because the last year I was here they also came at 5:00am, and the lady couldn’t find my veins at all.
“I had huge bruises on my arms for a while. Thankfully it wasn’t the same lady. No shade to her. And yeah, today was a success because luckily I had to use the bathroom when they woke me up, so…”