Rusedski tight-lipped after hearing

Greg Rusedski left without comment tonight following an eight-hour drugs hearing in Montreal.

Rusedski left by a side entrance to avoid waiting reporters following the three-man tribunal in his native city.

Rusedski declined to speak to reporters as he, wife Lucy, and lawyers Mark Gay and David Pannick got into two waiting cars with blacked out windows and were believed to be heading straight to the airport.

No verdict was announced this evening and it is expected to be several days at the earliest before any announcement is made.

Rusedski tested positive for nandrolone at a tournament in Indianapolis last July but has strongly protested his innocence since making the findings known himself last month.

The British number two could face a two-year ban if found guilty, but feels he has been “singled out” by the ATP for unfair treatment.

Rusedski’s defence centred around the case of Czech player Bohdan Ulihrach, who was one of seven players to test positive for nandrolone between August 2002 and May 2003, and 36 others which showed elevated levels of the steroid below the legal limit of two nanograms per millilitre.

Of the seven players to test positive, only Ulihrach was found guilty and initially banned for two years, only to win an appeal when it emerged that ATP trainers had been giving players electrolyte supplements which were thought to be the cause of what the ATP call “an unprecedented number” of samples registering amounts of nandrolone.

The other six players, who have not been named under the ATP’s confidentiality clause, were then also cleared and the association’s trainers were told to stop distributing the suspect electrolytes in May 2003.