One of the first posts I ever produced on this blog was on fallen idols in sport, written in the aftermath of the extraordinary Lance Armstrong doping scandal which brought cycling to its knees. I concluded that we ought to be careful with the cult of personality and hero-worship in general. I bring this up, not to directly associate this odious individual with the subject of this article, but to highlight the sheer discomfort of returning to the topic of doping and discussing (on International Women’s Day no less) the revelation that a long-time idol of mine, Maria Sharapova, has failed a drugs test.
There is very little hard information at the moment outside of what Maria herself detailed in a press conference yesterday; that she had failed a drugs test on the 26th January following her defeat to Serena Williams in the Australian Open Quarter-Finals, and that the drug named meldonium which she had been taking since 2006 allegedly for health issues, was recently added the WADA prohibited substances list on January 1st. The substance in question, which is not licensed in the United States or most of Europe, has been on WADAs watch-list for over a year, with it being found in a substantial amount of athletes’ samples, and is said to increase blood flow thereby increasing exercise capacity, which is why it has been banned as a performance-enhancing drug. Tom Fordyce of the BBC wrote rather damningly earlier that:
‘there have been 55 positive tests for meldonium in 2016 alone […] a 2015 study revealed that 724 of 4,316 Russian athletes tested were found to have meldonium in their system.’
It’s a disconcerting statistic, and even more so given the widespread doping allegations in Russian athletics, but right now we have to deal with the facts and wait until the investigation, which will presumably involve consulting the doctor who prescribed her the medication on health grounds and verifying the condition, has concluded.
It’s an extraordinary situation then, when individuals such as Jennifer Capriati come out and claim that Maria ought to be stripped of her previous titles on the basis of taking the drug at all, but since the drug was not illegal until the date of January 1st 2016, her previous wins are completely irrelevant. It’s not a drug that was previously unknown, and been manufactured to deceive the WADA drug testers; the authorities have known that it exists and until the January 1st 2016, deemed it to be legitimate to take. The problem lies in the fact that she continued to take it after this date until the 26th January, and whilst I ultimately do believe that it is the athlete’s responsibility to be aware of what is going into their system and its legalities, does this demonstrate malicious intent and deception? I certainly don’t think so.
The fact is that Sharapova has willingly taken meldonium, either knowing that it was illegal and thereby cheating, or not knowing and being guilty of negligence, and she will face a ban as a result of it. I don’t dispute this, and I think it’s important that we maintain these sanctions in order to reiterate how serious we take doping as a sporting community. However, I think that the ban has to take the circumstances into account and reflect how we want to deal with drugs in sport. Individuals like Justin Gatlin, Dwain Chambers, Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong; they doped without regret and because they could, knowing the consequences of taking drugs which they believed to be undetectable, and with the latter directly implicating and ruining countless lives in the process. These individuals brought utter shame upon their sport, themselves, and tore at the fabric of the sporting world. Sharapova has made a seemingly honest but ultimately stupid mistake, subsequently gone public and apologised, acknowledging her own negligence. She has been transparent, and that’s a rare thing indeed. As someone who has given so much to her sport and taken responsibility for her errors upfront, I do hope the authorities appropriate the correct sanction.
Baseline Sport 