The ITF said in a statement that "Sharapova will be provisionally suspended with effect from [March 12], pending determination of the case".
The five-times grand slam champion said: "For the past 10 years I have been given a medicine called Mildronate by my doctor, my family doctor and a few days ago after I received the letter I found out that it also has another name of Meldonium which I did not know".
Sharapova said she received an email from the World Anti-Doping Agency in December that noted changes to tennis' program for 2016. She said that the email including a link to a list of banned substances, but that she did not look at it.
Meldonium is used to treat diabetes and low magnesium and improve blood flow, among other things.
"It's very important for you to understand that for 10 years this medicine was not on WADA's banned list and I had been legally taking the medicine for the past 10 years," Sharapova said.
"But on January 1st the rules had changed and Meldonium became a prohibited substance which I had not known."So now, there's speculation that she can't continue playing if she has to be on this drug, thus spelling the end of her career. Nike, Porsche, and TAG Heuer promptly dumped her. Very classy... not. It's not as if she's suddenly turned out to be a big white Russian female Tiger Woods type sex fiend; and last I checked owning a Porsche and a TAG Heuer were great performance enhancers for pulling chicks so I don't see how they have the moral high ground here. After all, Porsche and TAG Heuer stuck photos of Maria Sharapova on their ads with the intent of subliminally telling their target market that if they buy their product, they might have a chance with Maria Sharapova. Yeah, real classy, right there.
Jokes aside, there are some really grey areas developing in the world of sport and drug testing, and this case would be one of those. Tennis is a fully professional sport. The big break with amateurism that happened in the 1960s left great scars on the sport, but in a nutshell, it is one of the sports where the players make money in direct proportion to their performance. While it is customary to argue taking PEDs is cheating, there's an aspect to tennis that indicates the effect of PEDs might not be so dramatic.
For instance if a male player took PEDs for better endurance, there would be an advantage in the fifth set at a grand slam tournament, which happens about 1 in 6 matches across 4 tournaments a year with 127 matches each. Even if the PEDs added a 10% boost performance, its arguable it is not going to be reflected in a 10% winning rate. It is totally unlike Olympic running or sprinting where by a 1%boost in endurance could reflect itself as 10% more chance of winning. In women's tennis, they don't play these 5 set matches at all - ALL of these female tennis athletes have enough endurance to play the 2hours on court through a 3 set match that goes deep into the third set.
This is from the same sport that allowed their racquets to develop, grow, and become totally unlike the wooden racquets that were standard in the 1960s. They've been perfectly happy to let these modern racquets completely change the sport (and in the process make it rather boring) and suddenly they're worried about Maria Sharapova's meds.
As for Meldonium, it is highly suspect as to whether taking it would enhance performance enough to make an ordinary Top 50 player into a player with Maria Sharapova's record. This also goes without saying but the results of tennis matches are more likely to be manipulated by match fixing than PEDs At least the player on PEDs is trying to win. The player tanking sets and matches because of match fixing are far more detrimental than the incremental advantage of PEDs.
I get it that PEDs are open to abuse and might have terrible side effects. Especially steroids of all kinds. And if Maria Sharapova were forced into retirement because of this drug, I probably won't be one to miss her al that much. But it does seem to me that people are overestimating the impact of PEDs on a professional sport where other influences are far more likely to impact on the fairness or legitimacy of match outcomes. You'd have to be blind Freddy not to see that PEDs like this one, pertaining to tennis is firmly in the middle of the 18% grey card.
Of course, Jennifer Capriati doesn't see it that way.
"I had to lose my career and never opted to cheat no matter what. I had to throw in the towel and suffer," she wrote.
"I didn't have the high priced team of [doctors] that found a way for me to cheat and get around the system and wait for science to catch up".
"What's the point of someone taking a heart medicine that helps your heart recover faster unless you have a heart condition? Is that accurate," she asked.
"In my opinion [if] its all true every title should be stripped. This is other people's lives as well."
Well yeah, but as Navratilova pointed out somewhere, what Sharapova took was legal until 1st of January this year. Besides, this stripping offenders of medals and trophies is starting to look crazy after Lance Armstrong had his 7 Tour de France titles taken from him. Sports organisations can do that to humiliate the offender but it hardly changes what happened - somebody on PEDs beat the field. It's not like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds didn't hit all those homers during the years when MLB didn't look too deeply into PEDs. It's not like Sharapova didn't win those 5 Grand Slam tournaments. In the context of professional sport, it's actually hard to argue against an athlete who tries to get better by taking PEDs, especially when his pay is dependent on the outcome.
So here we are again, in this moral purgatory of Performance Enhancing Drugs. We're none the wiser, none the better and probably more huffed up with self-righteous indignation over something oh so grey.
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