Williams is back. Tennis did what it always does when a legend reappears: it got emotional before it started thinking.
Queen’s Club, London grass, a full crowd, doubles with Victoria Mboko, a win over Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Erin Routliffe. The scene was perfect for the easy story: the great champion, 44 years old, two daughters, almost four years away from the tour, still able to hit the ball as if time had merely moved around her.
Then the tournament stopped almost immediately, because of Mboko’s injury. But Queen’s draw is not the point. The point is what Williams’s return brings with it.
Because Williams is not simply coming back after a break. She is coming back after becoming the public face of Ro, a telemedicine company that sells GLP-1 weight-loss treatments. Reuters wrote that Ro had chosen Williams as a “celebrity patient ambassador” for its weight-loss treatments and that her husband, Alexis Ohanian, is an investor in the company and sits on its board.
In the statement released via PRNewswire, Ro presented the operation like this: Williams and Ro
“will lead a multi-year campaign to normalize the use of GLP-1 medications for weight loss”.
This is not a side note. It is the stated aim of the campaign: to normalise the use of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
Williams, speaking to ELLE, was even more direct. Asked whether she was on a specific GLP-1, she replied:
“I am on Zepbound through Ro”. She then added: “I work out. I don’t ‘just’ take them”.
And immediately afterwards came the sentence that moves the discussion beyond a simple motivational narrative:
“my body really didn’t change until I got on one”.
This is the part the celebratory story would like to skip.
There is currently no established anti-doping violation to attribute to Williams. Saying otherwise would be wrong. GLP-1s are not currently prohibited substances under WADA rules. USADA states this plainly: “GLP-1s are not prohibited in sport”. And on the therapeutic use exemption, it adds: “No, you do not need a TUE for any GLP-1 because GLP-1 agonists are not prohibited in sport”.
Formally, the discussion could even end there.
Except ending it there means failing to understand the problem.
Anti-doping was not created as a notarial exercise. It does not exist in order to say that everything not yet on the list is automatically clean, neutral or irrelevant. The list is an attempt to keep up with the pharmacological reality of sport. Sometimes it gets there first; more often, it arrives later. The Williams case shows precisely that gap: a substance that is not yet prohibited can already be meaningful in sporting terms.
USADA itself, on its page dedicated to GLP-1s, does not merely say that they are permitted. It also writes:
“WADA is currently monitoring and evaluating the use of GLP-1 agonists by athletes to determine if they should be prohibited in the future”.
WADA is not looking the other way. Its Monitoring Program concerns substances “not on the Prohibited List” that the agency wants to observe in order to identify “patterns of misuse in sport”. The 2026 document includes “Markers of Semaglutide and Tirzepatide”, both in competition and out of competition.
So no, they are not banned. But no, they are not irrelevant.
The point is not whether a GLP-1 automatically turns any tennis player into a better tennis player. No substance works in a vacuum. The advantage depends on the starting body, the discipline and the problem the drug solves. A drug that reduces weight and appetite may be irrelevant for someone already in ideal condition. It may be decisive for someone trying to bring a competitive body back within more favourable parameters.
In tennis, the body is not background. It is the technical means of performance. One kilo less can mean less load on the knees, quicker changes of direction, less fatigue in recovery movements, less wear in lateral movement. Not always. Not for everyone. But enough for pretending that the issue is only “wellness” to become ridiculous.
Williams knows this better than anyone. Speaking to ELLE, she explained why, in her view, the issue cannot be reduced to laziness or shortcuts:
“I don’t ‘just’ take them”. But in the same passage she also said that her body “really didn’t change” until she began the treatment. And when ELLE asked whether she would have considered GLP-1s while playing professionally, Williams answered: “I wish I had this after I had [my daughter] Olympia”.
That is not just any sentence. It is not a cosmetic detail. It is an acknowledgement, made by Williams herself, that the drug enters the relationship between body, weight, career and performance.
Ro chose another formulation, an even more defensive one. In the PRNewswire statement, Williams says:
“My body needed the GLP-1 and clinical support”. Then comes the perfect campaign line: “This isn’t a shortcut. It’s healthcare”.
It is an effective line. But the moment Williams returns to professional tennis, it is no longer enough.
Because the body of a retired celebrity is one thing. The body of an athlete in competition is another.
Sport has never believed that the body remains a private matter once it enters the field of play. That is the very premise of anti-doping. The ITIA writes that players are tested for “substances prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)”. The WTA, on its own anti-doping page, says that the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme exists to “maintain the integrity of tennis and protect the health and rights of all tennis players”. So the point is not only medical. It is competitive.
The question then becomes simple: if a substance changes weight, appetite and body composition, and if that change can affect the way an athlete moves, recovers, protects her joints and sustains effort, is it really enough to say that it is not yet on the list?
The most convenient answer is always the same: it is not prohibited.
But “not prohibited” does not mean “does not count”.
The even more uncomfortable part is the business.
Williams did not merely use a medical treatment and keep it within the private sphere. She became a paid ambassador for Ro. Reuters wrote that Ohanian, her husband, is an investor in the company and sits on its board. Front Office Sports wrote that “Advertisements featuring Serena Williams for GLP-1 medications” would air on Tennis Channel during her competitive return at Queen’s.
It is not a family property, and no one should invent what is not there. But the short circuit is obvious: drug, image, competitive return and commercial promotion all enter the same field of vision.
This is not a sporting fairy tale. It is a textbook case of how the market arrives before the rulebook.
The public story is already prepared. Williams as mother, entrepreneur, icon, pioneer, champion who refuses to accept the end. All true, or at least all narratable. But in the middle of it there is something less comfortable: a champion returns to the tour after using and promoting drugs that alter weight, appetite and body composition. And she does so while WADA is monitoring them without yet banning them.
The problem is not putting Williams on trial. The problem is refusing to let a pharmacological question be turned into a wellness advertisement.
There is an enormous difference between treating a medical condition and using a drug to make a body competitive again. In some cases the two things may overlap. That is exactly why rules, questions and transparency are needed. Instead, tennis risks doing what it does best: turning on the lights, selling the comeback and leaving the rest to a committee.
The weakest point in the defence of GLP-1s in sport is that they can also involve loss of muscle mass. That is true. But it does not close the discussion. A drug can have performance-useful effects and physiological costs at the same time. It does not have to be perfect to be relevant. It only has to correct a limitation, or make it less penalising.
Williams herself linked the discussion to the competitive body. Speaking to ELLE, she said that being at the weight she was used to was important for her confidence, but also for her body, her joints and her knees. She said that her body did not change until she began the treatment. She said she was on Zepbound through Ro. She said she does not “just” take it, because she continues to train. All of this may be perfectly legitimate from a medical point of view. But it is not, by definition, neutral in sporting terms.
The problem is precisely here: neutrality is not created by the silence of the list.
WADA is monitoring. USADA says no TUE is needed because GLP-1s are not banned, but it also says WADA is evaluating whether they should be banned in the future. Ro says it is not a shortcut, it is healthcare. Williams says her body did not change until she got on one of those drugs. Reuters says her husband is an investor and board member of the company that sells them. Front Office Sports says Ro adverts featuring Williams would appear during the television coverage of her return.
These are not scattered details, but the same picture.
The problem is that monitoring is the elegant form of waiting. It is useful for gathering data, but meanwhile the phenomenon moves on. In fact, it plays. It enters tournaments, advertisements, interviews and motivational narratives. When the list arrives, if it arrives, the market will already have taken its lap. The athletes will already have understood. So will the sponsors.
And this is where Williams’s return becomes much more interesting than the result of a doubles match at Queen’s.
A legend coming back at 44 is a good story. A legend coming back after using and promoting weight-loss drugs monitored by anti-doping is another story. Much less comfortable. Much more important.
Tennis can tell it however it likes. It can put in the grass, the applause, motherhood, nostalgia and greatness. But one question remains and does not disappear: when a drug helps transform an athlete’s competitive body, is it really enough to say that it is not yet on the list of banned drugs?
For now, the official answer is yes.
And that is exactly the problem.
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