Didn't force partner to drop out, says banned Peng Shuai

China's Peng Shuai

Peng Shuai has denied wrongdoing and vowed to return to tennis after the Chinese star was banned for six months and fined $10,000 for attempting to force her doubles partner to withdraw from Wimbledon.

The two-time Grand Slam winner in women's doubles, was punished on Wednesday by the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), the game's anti-corruption body. It said that Peng "used coercion and offered the possibility of financial reward" to convince her doubles partner to pull out of Wimbledon in 2017 after the sign-in deadline so that she could swap partners.

The TIU banned the veteran for six months, with three suspended, meaning she is not eligible to play until November 8. "During the 20 years of my professional career I have never used any ways to force a partner to drop out of a match," Peng, who won the women's doubles at Wimbledon in 2013 and Roland Garros in 2014, wrote on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter. "It was completely her own action to drop out of the doubles. We never gave her any money to drop out of the match with a fake injury."

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