Sharapova: The Beginning Of The End?

Glamour, wealth and tennis superstar Maria Sharapova have been bedfellows for years. The US-based Russian player, whose off-court appeal eclipses her excellent performance on the court, earned a staggering $285 million in her career before her admission of having tested positive for the recently banned drug Meldonium at the Australian Open took everyone by surprise. Sponsors who had struck lucrative deals have fled, but to the now-in-trouble Sharapova, that won’t matter.

As things stand, Sharapova needs to wriggle her way out of the quagmire. The shrill voices of resistance that are defending her cannot bail her out. For, whether or not some accept the truth, there is no running away from the fact that she has messed it up, and landed in a potentially career-ending situation.

Sharapova said that she had been using Meldonium since 2006 for medical reasons. Manufactured in Latvia, the drug is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States, where she lives. It was brought into being by Ivars Kalvin of the scientific board of the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis, which proved that the drug was useful for treating myocardial infarction and diabetes, among other conditions.

Under the scanner of the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) in 2015, it was classified as a metabolic modulator and included in the prohibited list in January 2016. In spite of Sharapova’s confession and self-defence, Dick Pound, the President of WADA, slammed her usage of the substance as being “reckless beyond description”.

Consuming a banned performance-enhancing substance – which Sharapova was having under a different name, mildronate – is possible. But how was she doing it, and that too for ten long years, when the drug that is approved for use in a few countries is prescribed only for four to six weeks?

How was her support staff, which includes qualified medical professionals, caught napping?

Did she apply for Therapeutic Use Exemptions, which can permit the usage of a drug in the prohibited list, in compliance with the rigid rules of the WADA? Or did she and her army of employees take life for granted until the sudden hit struck her out of nowhere?

What will not help her in any possible way is the drug’s creator Kalvins’ affirmation that meldonium is not a ‘performance-enhancing drug.’ It is – even if Kalvins shrieks from the rooftops that banning the drug means banning athletes “from taking care of health”, which is a “kind of violation of human rights”.

What won’t help her is her management’s statement, which read, “Maria has already acknowledged she should have known. She makes no excuses for missing it.” Being a top-notch player which she is, she has to show the way to those who follow and even try to emulate her. Other sportspersons have also tested positive after undergoing the test, and the yardstick for judging their guilt or absence of it will be the same.

At the moment, the best Sharapova’s lawyers can hope for is that her ban will be reduced to two years and, with a little bit of luck, for a shorter period. Hampered by injuries, which have made her a lesser force than she has been, she needs to prove her innocence to the tribunal first and pray for a return to the court once the ban, if it is a reduced one, ends.

Should she fail to convince the jury, Sharapova will confront darkness very soon. Those who love her unconditionally will detest the outcome. Others who follow the game and have watched her win those Grand Slams won’t enjoy the reality either.

However, the relationship between sportspersons and performance-enhancing drugs has been a terrible one, which explains why those prohibited lists exist in the first place. The best we can hope for is that Sharapova has unknowingly erred, which the tribunal will judge with compassion.

After all, every career in every sphere of life ends. But like this? Nobody likes it.