Tete ready to resume career as four-year ban comes to end

A four-year ban of one of SA’s best boxing exports, Zolani Tete, finally comes to an end on Thursday, freeing him to start afresh despite his advanced age. Tete made headlines for ignominious reasons when he was slapped with the lengthy ban for failing a dope testafter his fourth-round knockout win over Englishman Jason Cunningham in a junior-featherweight clash at the Wembley Arena in London in July 2022. However, traces of the banned substance, stanozolol, was found in his urine sample, though he denied knowledge of how it got into his system.

Tete embarked on a worldwide campaign seeking top laboratories to clear himself, including enlisting one in France, which sided with him, arguing that the volume of the substance proved he did not ingest it. However, United Kingdom Anti-Doping (UKAD), which took over the case from the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport (Saids), said it would give him a lenient sentence in exchange for him revealing his source. Tete insisted he was innocent and had been a victim of a conspiracy, even citing loopholes in the process of his failed dope test.

He vowed not to quit boxing, saying he would continue after the end of the ban despite being 38 years old. Reacting to the end of the ban, Tete, who remained within boxing circles by training boxers at his boxing club, All Winners, said he was ready to get back into the ring. “The last four years have been nothing but hell for me and my family,” he said.

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“To be denied to do what I love on frivolous circumstances when I know I am innocent is heartbreaking. “But as I said, UKAD never brought me to boxing, and they will not take me out of it.”

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