Mistake or Not, Tennis Needs to be Ruthless With Maria Sharapova

Will letting Maria off easy set a bad precedence for the future stars?

(Photo: AP)

Remember that time when it was okay to drive in India without seatbelts on?

Then, one day, the authorities took the decision to make seatbelts mandatory. Now imagine, a driver was pulled up by a cop AFTER the rule was put in place and he pleaded his case along these lines.

“Sorry sir,” he says to the cop. “I know a notification about seatbelts being compulsory was issued but I didn’t read it.”

Maria Sharapova is that errant driver. She has been busted for consuming a banned drug and is now in a desperate scramble to save her playing career. Caught at the wheel without seatbelts on, she admits to making a “huge mistake” but is hoping to escape with a rap on the knuckles.

For an elite athlete such as her though, ignorance is a weak if not silly defense. It is ludicrous to say that while she received a letter in December from the World Anti Doping Agency  (WADA) about changes to the list of prohibited drugs for 2016, she did not “click on the link.”

A superstar like Sharapova doesn’t figure out important stuff like this by navigating through emails herself. She is a mini-industry worth millions of dollars, and her support staff includes managers, physios, coaches, trainers and medical doctors.

When information of this kind is sent across, someone from her team has to pipe up and tell her, “Hey Maria, you know those meds you have been having for the flu, don’t have that anymore. It’s banned. Let’s hunt for alternatives.”

It beggars belief that between December 22 when she received the WADA email to January 26 when she tested positive after losing to Serena Williams in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, no one in her staff realised she was popping a banned pill.

There should be an all-new emoji to make sense of this one.

Ignorance or incompetence- neither is an acceptable explanation.

Cause for Deeper Concern

There’s another troubling little detail to the story that demands deeper investigation. According to a WADA spokesman, Meldonium, the substance found in Sharapova’s body was banned “because of evidence of its use by athletes with the intention of enhancing performance.”

Now, Sharapova’s lawyer John Haggerty may argue that his client was “completely unaware” of the performance-enhancing capabilities of the drug, but in modern sport that is a pair of dirty words. Since the Lance Armstrong saga in particular, there is a healthy disgust for star athletes found attempting to cosmetically engineer their bodies for improved results. There’s no evidence yet that Sharapova was, but why was she continuing to consume a drug that was on WADA’s monitoring list since 2015?

Sharapova has lived in the United States since the age of seven, so why was she using a drug that isn’t even approved for sale in that country? And doing so for ten long years.

Surely other people in the US have similar symptoms to Sharapova’s - multiple bouts with the flu, erratic EKG results, deficiency in magnesium and signs of diabetes? What do they take to feel better?

Maria Sharapova arrives for the press conference in Los Angeles on Monday to announce the news of her positive dope test result. (Photo: AP)

Making an Example of Maria?

Clearly, more details will tumble out in the days to come. If found to have been taking a banned substance knowingly; Sharapova faces a potential career ending four-year ban. If the “huge mistake” argument succeeds, she is looking at two-year hiatus that can be reduced by another year at the discretion of the adjudicators.

In essence, this is a test case not just for tennis but all sport. If Sharapova, with an army of support staff at her command, is dealt with kid gloves, what stops a player at the lower levels of sport from making a similar plea in the future? “Whoops, sorry, I didn’t know. See, you let Maria off, please spare me as well.”

Sharapova’s pre-emptive strike of revealing the details in a press conference before the information was either leaked or made public officially appears to be a smart public relations exercise. However, it must not cloud the enormity of this moment.

In the year that sport hosts its most compelling extravaganza, the Olympics, there can be no compromise in the battle against doping. It is essential that offenders, deliberate or otherwise, be shown no compassion.

For over a decade, Maria Sharapova’s resplendent talent and dazzling good looks have earned her an enormous, devoted fan base. She was right in stoically conceding that she has let her “fans and the sport down.”

Penance though is no substitute for punishment.