Bulgarian player Sesil Karatantcheva, 16, who looked to have a bright future in tennis, has been banned for two years for a drugs offence.
Rejecting Karatantcheva's explanation that she was pregnant when she tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone, an independent tribunal found her guilty of using the performance-enhancingsubstance.
The teenager, who is coached by her father, tested positive at the French Open in Paris last June and out of competition in Tokyo the same month.
She may have defeated the great Venus Williams in the third round at Roland Garros, but she loses the 76,000 ($192,000) prizemoney and world ranking points.
Karatantcheva will also forfeit ranking points and prizemoney from the tournaments following the French Open.
The Bulgarian, ranked No 41 in the world, tested positive after losing to Elena Likhovtseva in the quarter-finals in Paris.
She has three weeks to decide whether to accept the ruling or appeal to the International Tennis Federation and the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.
Karatantcheva, the 2004 French Open junior champion, is one of the youngest players to be banned and the first female player to test positive since Lourdes Dominguez Lino, who was banned for three months after testing positive for cocaine in 2002.
Although drug-testing is done at junior tournaments, no junior player has ever tested positive at one of those events.
