Maria Sharapova is not just a tennis star. She is a global sports icon, a successful entrepreneur and the highest-earning female athlete in the world.
Between her tennis earnings, her endorsement deals and her business ventures, Sharapova is essentially an empire.
So when one of the most recognisable figures in women’s sport admits she has failed a doping test, it’s only natural that the world’s reaction is dramatic and the consequences are grave. This is undoubtedly the biggest doping scandal to hit tennis and it is shocking that the protagonist of this story is someone as professional and
How such a “huge mistake” – as she describes it – was allowed to happen in the presence of a massive entourage of coaches, fitness trainers, doctors, physiotherapists, agents and managers that all report to Sharapova is the question on everyone’s mind.
If she has been legally taking this drug for 10 years, how did her doctor not know Meldonium was added to WADA’s 2016 list of prohibited substances and advise her to stop taking it? How did Sharapova permit herself to be this careless and not check the new list of banned substances that was emailed to her in December and allow herself to compete at a grand slam with a performance-enhancing drug present in her system?
The Russian five-time major champion did the smart PR move by taking this head on and announcing it herself. She also did what so many other athletes fail to do, which is accepting full responsibility for what happened. That level of transparency has not been tennis’ strong suit so far and information tends to be minimal when scandal strikes.
So standing up there and publicly admitting she made a mistake was groundbreaking in many ways and tennis should take this opportunity to prove to the world that doping is not an issue that is taken lightly in this sport, irrespective of the profile of the player involved.
The Tennis Anti-Doping programme has come under fire many times for lack of out-of-competition testing and lack of blood testing as well. It’s imperative that everything is done right moving forward, that Sharapova is treated like any other player while also making sure whatever punishment she gets is in proportion with the degree of fault. You don’t want officials to be too harsh in trying to make an example out of her or too lenient because of her profile.
The public reaction has ranged from calling Sharapova a drugs cheat, having taken a performance-enhancing drug for all those years, to chalking it off as a mere case of negligence. I don’t believe a judgment can be passed until the ITF performs an investigation and reveals all the details on why Sharapova was taking this drug and whether she intentionally used it to enhance her performance.
A ban is inevitable and for someone who has been at the top of the sport all this time, a mistake like this is inconceivable and to some extent unforgiveable. Sharapova had been legally taking the drug for 10 years. The fault falls on her for any use of the drug after January 1, 2016. She failed the test on January 26. Those 26 days may end up defining her career and for someone who has built an impeccable image over the past 12 years or so, it is hard to imagine how that image can recover from this.
