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Maria Sharapova is doing everything right (after doing something so wrong)

By Steven Kutz

Published: Mar 16, 2016 7:57 a.m. ET

Unlike A-Rod and Lance Armstrong before her, Sharapova is doing all she can to minimize damage

When professional athletes fail a drug test — and they know they’re guilty — it would seem to be a no-brainer for them to admit wrongdoing as a way to ingratiate themselves with fans and mitigate the damage with sponsors and governing bodies meting out punishment. But many superstar athletes don’t.

Athletes who are in trouble have two choices, says Jack Deschauer, senior vice president at public relations company Levick, who has counseled both athletes and professional sports organizations during crises: Tell the world themselves, or wait for someone else to find out and let them tell the world.

“You might as well tell the story yourself. It allows you to put context around it, and frame it before someone else can. And people will think: ‘Hey, she was honest from the beginning,’” he says.

And that’s just what Maria Sharapova did on March 7 when she held a press conference and announced that she failed a drug test for taking Mildronate — also called meldonium — and was waiting to find out what her punishment will be. The drug is made in Latvia and used to treat ischemia, which is a lack of blood flow. It is not approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA. She said she had been taking the drug for 10 years for various health issues, and that as of Jan. 1, 2016 it was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) list of banned substances. But that she didn’t know it had been added.

Since the press conference, nearly 100 athletes — from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Sweden — have failed drug tests for meldonium, which increases blood flow. WADA says one of the reasons it added the drug to its banned list is because so many athletes had been using it to try to increase their stamina.

Sharapova has been the highest paid female athlete in the world for 11 years, according to Forbes, so she could lose a lot of money if she doesn’t deal well with this situation.

“Here’s what I can’t figure out: She’s done everything so perfectly [in her career]. She’s got good people around her. She makes $30 million a year. But when it comes to one of the few things that can burst that bubble, no one checks?” Deschauer says.

But he adds that since she found out, she’s done just about everything right. That could potentially help her get a shorter suspension, which could have her playing — and getting paid by some of the sponsors that ended or suspended their relationships with her — sooner.

Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College who has written several books on sports and business, says it could end up hurting Sharapova to be a woman in the news for drug cheating when it’s usually men in the news for that. But, he says, “Obviously, coming clean is to her credit,” and he agrees that it could help her get a more lenient punishment.

Many athletes have received harsher penalties than they might have from their sport’s governing bodies — and more anger directed at them from fans — because they didn’t admit wrongdoing.

For example, compared with Sharapova, “A-Rod was the opposite. If he admitted wrongdoing earlier, it might have helped prevent such a long suspension,” Deschauer says.

Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) was suspended for the entire 2014 baseball season — the longest non-lifetime suspension in baseball history, for what Major League Baseball called “overwhelming evidence” that he obtained illegal performance-enhancing substances and for “hindering” its investigation. Throughout the investigation, he said publicly that he was innocent.

A lenient punishment?

“I don’t believe that Sharapova knew the drug had been banned and continued to take it. Whoever had responsibility for this fell asleep at the wheel. Maybe they were afraid to tell her,” says Deschauer.

And Sharapova, who is 28 years old and has won five Grand Slam tournaments, was never in the press before for a bad reason, which should help, he adds.

She was provisionally banned on March 12; her official punishment hasn't yet been announced. Deschauer predicts she’ll be banned from the tour for one year (the maximum she could be banned is four years).

The last high-profile female tennis player to be punished for failing a drug test was Martina Hingis. In 2008, she was 27 years old and was told she tested positive for cocaine and was banned from the sport for two years. She then announced her retirement from the sport, but in 2013 she returned and has since had a successful run as a doubles player.

The sponsors

Deschauer says at this point, the contracts of all major athletes have clauses in them about how to deal with failed drug tests. And that when an athlete is as famous as Sharapova, they’ll likely get paid again after the suspension ends — though often at a lower rate (perhaps 75%), depending on how the contract was worded.

After Sharapova’s press conference, the watchmaker Tag Heuer decided not to renew its contract with her, and Nike NKE, +0.08% and Porsche VOW3, +1.19% decided to suspend their sponsorships. Her racket maker, Head, has done neither and is standing by her.

“Nike has gone through this so many times, they’re getting better at it,” Deschauer says, adding that they now seem to be thinking: Let’s suspend, and then figure it out.

“A lot of this goes back to Lance Armstrong. They got so burned by him. They didn’t drop him for years. He kept denying allegations. And then he admitted he was lying,” Deschauer says.

Nike, Porsche and TAG Heuer became the latest sponsors to distance themselves from Maria Sharapova after the tennis star said she failed a drug test at this year’s Australian Open.

Armstrong, who won seven Tour de France bicycle races between 1999 and 2005, was banned from the sport for life in 2012 for his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. He denied doping for years, but finally admitted — to Oprah Winfrey — in 2013 that he had used the drugs.

Asked if the Sharapova situation will harm Nike, he said, “They’ll be OK. They make so much money and have so many athletes in so many sports now. It’s not like 1986 with Michael Jordan. There’s enough of a mix to survive a one-year suspension of one player.”

What Sharapova should do next

“If I was suspended for a year, I would keep my head down and practice a lot, and be ready to play when the suspension is over. The biggest thing after a suspension: win. If she’s in the semifinals of Grand Slams again, the sponsors will return,” says Deschauer.

But that’s a big “if” at this point. More of a concern for Sharapova might be how interested sponsors are in her if or when she does return to the tour. “She’s toward the end of the most competitive years of her playing career, so sponsors might have an easier time distancing themselves from her,” Zimbalist says.

And if somehow she never again makes millions of dollars a year? She’ll still be OK.

“She’s got enough money for five generations of Sharapovas,” Deschauer says.

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