Sharapova has served her sentence. It's not correct, that she should be further obstructed on her return
April 21 2017 - 2:00PM
Maria Sharapova's career will forever be blemished by doping ban, but she has served her sentence
Darren Kane
There's no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt; than with a flood of naked truth
Frank J. Underwood, House of Cards
It's an easy conclusion to draw, classifying every athlete found guilty of doping as a "cheat", who maybe shouldn't be welcomed back into their sport even after a ban is spent. It's even easier, to forever thereafter furrow your brow at the mere mention of the athlete's name.
Much harder, is to delineate between the "cheat" – Lance Armstrong is the exemplar – and the athlete who may have broken the same rules, but very differently.
In this context, how is it that time does seem to almost evaporate? Next Wednesday, the five-time grand slam champion and Olympic medallist Maria Sharapova will stroll back onto the stage, returning from a forced exile from tennis by reason of having been found guilty of a doping offence, committed at the 2016 Australian Open. Though by then it will be exactly 15 months since Sharapova last wielded a racquet in the full fury of competition, somehow it seems she never really was absent at all.
As distinct from the vast majority of athletes subjected to the ignominy of being found to have breached a sport's anti-doping rules – whether by accident, negligence or nefarious intent – Sharapova's ban from sport seems to have caused insignificant damage. Once endorsements aggregating out at $27 million are factored in, Sharapova ranks behind only Serena Williams on Forbes magazine's list of the world's highest-earning female athletes to June 2016. The 2017 edition will tell no worse a story.
Global brands including Nike and Porsche have stayed loyal, despite suspending their contracts to some extent during Sharapova's ban (the Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer did axe Sharapova). Further, Sharapova has evidently worked mighty hard on her semi-eponymous line of confectionary; and in indulging in what all the beautiful people of California might do to while away the days, living in a castle made of money.
As if on cue and almost as she was never gone, Sharapova will re-enter the fray next Wednesday at Stuttgart's Porsche Grand Prix. That Sharapova is able to do that is courtesy of the wildcard bestowed on her by the tournament's organisers. Sharapova sitting idle from competition during her enforced exile means she no longer has any WTA world rankings points beside her name. Indeed, Sharapova's name is absent from the list of the top 1000 or more women's players (and most casual observers probably couldn't name half the top 20 players on that list).
So from that perspective I ask you this – ought it be the case, that Sharapova is so embraced back into competition at the sport's highest level? Or simply tolerated? Sentiments expressed recently by Angelique Kerber and Andy Murray – each the current world No. 1 – can be summarised as a condemnation of Sharapova receiving any special treatment, allowing her back on the German clay or anywhere else her world ranking doesn't otherwise get her.
Now, before I let you have my thoughts, I'll declare an interest. I was at Wimbledon on July 3, 2004. Memories of that afternoon remain vivid, for two reasons. First, because my mate Bevo and I spent an inordinate, glorious time drinking beer with a chap who must have been the actor that played the title role in the 1970s British sitcom George & Mildred. But indelible also, as this was the day that a 17-year-old Sharapova dominated Serena Williams, in straight sets, and then hoisted the Venus Rosewater Dish.
I've never been back to SW19 (neither has Bevo, and he lives in London), yet I've followed Sharapova's career with a special degree of interest – having been there the day the then-teenager defied all the sensible predictions of her demise, in the most fabulous and freewheeling fashion.
But those matters aside, Sharapova did plainly breach her sport's anti-doping rules at the Australian Open last year, after a routine in-competition urine sample collected on Australia Day tested positive for the presence of the prohibited cardiac medicine Meldonium, sold under brand names including "Mildronate".
At this point it's worth noting that, had either the International Tennis Federation's tribunal (which at first instance declared Sharapova ineligible for two years) or the Court of Arbitration for Sport decided that Sharapova used the banned substance with the intention of cheating, she'd have faced a career-ending four-year ban, from all sport. Sharapova didn't cheat – there is a mental element of intent, to cheating.
The CAS determined on appeal that, while Sharapova was at fault, the degree of her fault was not significant in the prevailing circumstances. Relevant factors included Sharapova's demonstrated longstanding and reasonable reliance on her agent, and his international management company, for the discharge of her anti-doping obligations including filing her whereabouts information and seeking therapeutic use exemptions; and the fact that she had for years been prescribed the offending pharmaceutical by a medical practitioner, with no consequence. Sharapova was negligent; she didn't cheat.
Also relevant was that the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the governing organisations of tennis, hadn't done enough to specifically warn athletes about Meldonium being listed as prohibited from January 2016 – the same month Sharapova failed her test. Tennis' international governing body had given notice to athletes of "significant changes", but then only listed procedural changes – not newly banned substances.
That Sharapova was at fault can be distilled down to her failure to supervise how her management discharged her anti-doping obligations, that she was ultimately responsible for. Sharapova may have been somewhat dismissive of the whole process; not having even declared her use of Mildronate to doping control officers at the Australian Open of last year is telling.
How someone standing in the shoes of Sharapova – with rings of people around her, charged with the singular responsibility of protecting her interests – can end up in a position such as this doesn't cease to astonish; yet it happens. For that, Sharapova's career will forever be blemished, and not just slightly. But on the basis of the CAS' judgment, Sharapova certainly didn't set out with the intention of cheating, or gaming the system for a competitive advantage.
Though not inconspicuously, Sharapova has served her sentence. It's not correct, that she should be further obstructed on her return; such decisions are the domain of tournament organisers and how many bums on seats they seek.
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