The Tennis “Racket” That Is Not Openly Spoken About: Tennis And Doping

2016 so far has not been a good year for International Tennis. It started on the wrong note with a BuzzFeed and BBC report alleging “widespread match-fixing in the upper echelons” of Tennis. While the Tennis world was still coming to terms with the consequences of such a damning report, on 7 March, Maria Sharapova gave it another jolt.

Maria Sharapova, currently world number seven and multiple grand slam winner, failed a drug test during this year’s Australian Open. This was revealed on 7 March 2016. Another giant skeleton had tumbled out of International Tennis’ closet.

Unfortunately post the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, every super human athlete looks suspicious. And Tennis fortunately (or unfortunately) has quite a few men and women who are constantly pushing the boundaries. There have always been muffled talks about doping in Tennis.

One of the most revered Tennis coaches in the world, Nick Bolletieri once mentioned that “If I said tennis is totally clean, I would be kidding myself … I would say there are certainly some short cuts being taken. Not that many, but it would be crazy to think differently” while Roger Federer went as far as saying “Naivety says that Tennis is clean”.

And why wouldn’t Tennis be suspected? After all this sport requires an athlete to have everything ranging from upper body strength, nimble footwork, endurance, speed, agility and most importantly the ability to recover very quickly from all the wear and tear that the body is put through for hours every day. In 2015 alone, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) under the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme conducted a total of 4433 tests (in and out of competition, for urine and blood) of which 2514 were male specimens and 1919 female specimens.

“A guy bulks up, has a new body and never gets tired...You see these guys or girls who come onto the tour talking about their new training programs and their diets where they eat this or that new thing…but they’ll never tell you about the drugs they took” ranted Tennis’ bad boy John McEnroe who later admitted to having consumed corticosteroids (according to him he had been given steroids without his knowledge during his career for 6 years). In 1997 Andre Agassi revealed he tested positive for meth and by 1999 Jim Courier went on record to say that “Tennis has an EPO (erythropoietin) problem.”

The early 2000s were relatively quiet with only some murmurs being raised against Nadal and his physique or Samantha Stosur and the “power” that she generated on her shots. However due to lack of any evidence these were always dismissed as the conspiracy theory of the skeptics. For the general public Tennis was by and large considered clean. It was unlike a wrestling or track and field where everyone is suspected unless proven otherwise.

This popular view drastically changed on 7 March, 2016 when Maria introduced the world to Meldonium.

As per the Journal of Drug Testing and Analysis “Meldonium demonstrates an increase in endurance performance of athletes, improved rehabilitation after exercise, protection against stress, and enhanced activations of central nervous system functions.” The drug is typically used for the treatment of certain heart and vascular diseases. It is also known to “to improve “work capacity” in healthy people who are overloaded physically or mentally …”

Almost making it the perfect option for someone playing Tennis which is possibly why it was added to the banned list of items by the ITF in 2016.

The World Anti-Doping Code has been crafted to “provide that substances and methods may be banned for use by athletes if they meet at least two of the following three criteria: (1) they are performance enhancing (2) they are dangerous to the health of the athlete; or (3) they violate the spirit of sport.”

As per the ITF website “Under the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme, players are tested for banned substances and methods in accordance with the prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Code (from WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency).”

One can go on debating whether Sharapova is guilty (The normal course of treatment, according to the manufacturers of Mildronate - Grindex pharmaceuticals, ranges from a few days to some weeks) or not (When she tested positive for the drug it had barely been banned for 26 days) because defining “cheating” in sports is very complex.

“Defining cheating is difficult because - like obscenity, child maltreatment and torture - it is at least in some respects in the eye of the beholder. For example, even if steroids did not have definitive or potential adverse health effects, we would believe that taking them under any circumstances is cheating because they fundamentally alter the athlete’s “natural” or “gifted” levels of physical and mental strength. We recognize, however, that some might permit this use to treat injuries if it facilitated only a return to baseline levels. Still others might permit their unregulated use, on the view that anything humans might develop that has the potential to enhance performance is fair game…” wrote Duke Law professors Doriane Lambelet Coleman and James E. Coleman Jr in their 2008 paper titled The Problem of Doping

However what cannot be argued is that the Sharapova incident has opened a can of worms and those muffled conversations about Tennis not being a clean sport will only get amplified.

Confidence in this sport has shattered in 2016, the fan’s mood has soured and cynicism has prevailed.

This is because sports are designed to highlight, isolate, and display the human body and its potential. So the question of doping and other technological interventions comes down to whether the particular intervention disrupts this basic function of sport.

In The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Professor Sandel Sandel suggests that doping “is troubling because it distorts and overrides natural gifts.” He fears that with excessive “outside” intervention “Sport can fade into a spectacle; it becomes a thing of amusement rather than a subject of appreciation.”

2016 is the year when Tennis needs to introspect. Does it want to be a sport where we truly appreciate human mental and physical powers or do we view it as a mere spectacle?