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ITF wants Korda's winnings back

The International Tennis Federation will chase disgraced tennis player Petr Korda for 660,000 dollars in prize-money it wants returned in the wake of his 1998 drug-test drama.

Deborah Jevans, ITF executive director, confirmed yesterday at the U.S. Open that the ruling body will go all out to recover prize-money from Korda, whose appeals were exhausted on Tuesday in a positive drug test that dated back to last year's Wimbledon competition.

The amount is the money won from tournament play since Wimbledon 1998, when he tested positive.

''It is 660,000 dollars that has to be collected,'' Jevans said.

What exactly will motivate the 1998 Australian Open winner to write out a cheque for that amount was still open to speculation.

Czech Korda's civil appeals case in London - he consistently claimed innocence despite discovery on the anabolic steroid nandrolene in his blood - was heard in British courts, but the player has no legal connection with Britain, living in the Czech Republic and the United States.

''We are going to open conversations with the player's agent to establish the most expedient way to get the money back,'' said Jevans.

"If he were not going to pay, then we would continue to pursue.''

Flanked by lawyers, the ITF official tried to steer the topic away from the money angle.

''The main point of everything we've done over the past year hasn't come down to dollars and cents. We want to establish the integrity of our (drug-testing) programme, 'that I don't know' is not an acceptable excuse,'' she said.

Korda, now retired, found his one-year ITF-ordered ban upheld by the highest appeals body in sport, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), in Lausanne on Tuesday.

The body ruled against an independent appeals body which last year overturned the ban imposed by the ITF.

Korda has said that he did not know how the drug got into his system and maintained his innocence. He announced a bitter retirement after failing to qualify for Wimbledon last June.

Jevans said that the ITF had increased its out-of-season drug- testing programme to 50 tests last year, a ten-fold increase. More than 100 players will be tested during this Grand Slam fortnight.

She also admitted that new medical evidence indicates that nandrolene may occur naturally in the body, the result of certain food and dairy products, a finding which could support Korda's claim that he had no idea of how his level was so high.

Jevans added that the demands of tennis and the almost year-round aspect of the sport could contribute to the pressure to maintain fitness at any cost.

''Tennis is a sport in which there is competition year-round and where there are rigorous demands on an athlete's psychological system increases the risk for any use of substances, be they licit, illicit or prohibited,'' she said.

UNI