Poor Maria: Is This Sharapova Doping Thing Really Such a Scandal?
The tennis world stood silent earlier this week. A surprise press conference announced by Maria Sharapova, during which her agent claimed she would make a “big announcement”. Whatever could it be, Maria? Retirement? Surely not, you can’t let constantly losing to Serena spoil everything for you. Maybe she’s getting married? Maybe she’s opening a school for underprivileged kids in Turkmenistan? Maybe she’s converting to Movementarianism?
Oh, nah, never mind. Just a failed drugs test.
Sharapova announced in her presser that she’d tested positive during the Australian Open for a drug called Meldonium. That may sound like the name of some futuristic industrial Shangi La but don’t be fooled. Sharapova has been provisionally banned from all tennis. She could face a ban of up to four years for a first time offence. In the shorter term she’s had major sponsorships with Nike, Porsche and Tag Heuer all either suspended or ended. More will likely follow as the snowball rolls down the hill.
Sharapova had been taking Meldonium (under the name mildronate) for a decade. It was added to the banned substances list by WADA in January, but apparently she didn’t click the link. Whoops.
“For the past 10 years I have been given a medicine called mildronate by my family doctor and a few days ago after I received the ITF letter I found out that it also has another name of meldonium which I did not know. It is very important for you to understand that for 10 years this medicine was not on WADA’s banned list and I had legally been taking the medicine for the past 10 years. But on 1 January the rules had changed and meldonium became a prohibited substance which I had not known. I failed the test and I take full responsibility for it. I made a huge mistake.”
Well that’s all well and good, matey, but this is an inexcusable mistake to make, bringing the very sport of tennis into absolute disrepute. An utter shambles and a disgrace to all involved.
Except… is it really?
There are a couple schools of thought about this. One is the generous approach, offering support for a genuine mistake (which this was, sort of – we’ll get to this idea soon) and congratulating her for owning up in public. Fair enough too, because a major athlete coming out on the front foot like this is kinda unprecedented. At least very rare. Normally they’ll try to cover it up and dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole they’ll never be able to climb out of. Some live in that hole to this day and we don’t even know. Others are named Lance Armstrong and while he was digging, clever journalists, documentarians, Oprah Winfrey and fellow athletes were burying him in there nice and deep-like.
But then on the other hand taking control and asking for sympathy also means she’s more likely to get that kind of support, perhaps influencing the severity of any ban. It’s a smart PR move and one that immediately moves the argument past the ‘how/why’ and into the ‘what next’ phase of things.
Here’s where I sit on the matter: I barely even care.
Look, Meldonium (I’ve been doing my research) is used to promote blood flow to vital organs by reducing the amount of oxygen they need to function at their best. It’s used mostly for people with heart defects and diabetes. Sharapova was prescribed it in 2006 to combat an irregular heart beat and a family history of diabetes. All legit there, no doctor’s poking a hole in that logic. It’s just that having oxygen-rich blood happens to aid athletic endurance too. She can play for longer, train for longer and at a higher level. So was this a sorry accident or was she knowingly doping? Hell yeah she was doping.
There are all sorts of performance enhancing drugs out there. Most people only think steroids and stuff that promotes muscle growth but probably the main use out there is for recovery. That’s a slippery slope in itself, because while fatigue recovery is something that ideally is not to be cheated, we all hate seeing athletes out injured and if Player A needs a little something-something to get back on the court quicker, well I’m not sure I even have a problem with that. I’d rather they’re playing than rotting on crutches somewhere.
That’s not relevant to Maria’s case though, even if she does have a history of injury. As Sharapova says, she’s been using this thing for a decade and it wasn’t until very recently that it was banned. The missed link, that bit is weak. It’d shock me enormously if nobody else in her team had access to that information. Either way, it’s all pretty clean as far as doping scandals go. It’s unlikely we see more than a year’s (maaaaybe two?) ban and it’s unlikely that this tarnishes her career in any damning way. In fact I’m bemused this happen more often. They’re all out there taking this or that and Sharapova happened to have hers banned, it could happen to anybody. It’s just that she and her trainers and doctors and advisors all missed (or ignored) the memo.
There are so many ways in which athletes try to optimise performance, from diet (Novak) to training to coaching to mental processes to all sorts. And chemicals do come into that equation. Look at those ghastly ads for supplements on the telly, there’s a culture that crosses over with the pro sports one and it’s all good for us plebs to take whatever we want but on the competitive level there are rules and regulations to stick to. Except that they’re always changing, case and point: meldonium.
Nobody is gonna argue that eating healthy is cheating. Very few would argue that vitamins are cheating. Some might argue that oxygen masks are cheating. While most are gonna argue that steroid use in sports is cheating. There’s a moving scale there and where they draw the line is a matter of contention. Sharapova definitely used meldonium to be a better tennis player. Just as Novak Djokovic stopped eating gluten to do the same. I’m not convinced that either is wrong and whatever Maria Sharapova’s been taking, it hasn’t helped much because she still can’t beat Serena Williams. In a post-Lance Armstrong world, I’m not sure this is such a big deal.