Maria Sharapova is not the first celebrity tennis player to be involved in a drug scandal. Let’s have a look at a few more.
Interestingly, there was a time when alcohol was allowed during matches. Suzanne Lenglen used to drink cognac while playing.
There have been instances where players got drunk while playing Grand Slam matches. Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase, who emptied a bottle of champagne while playing doubles in the 1970s, were probably the last players to have a drink while playing.
Alcohol was banned, but sadly rumours of drug abuse have continued. There were rumours of even top players like Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis and Pat Cash taking cocaine.
Mats Wilander and Martina Hingis even tested positive for cocaine.
Astonishingly, many argued that because cocaine is a recreational drug it’s okay to use, but the law is clear: being a stimulant, it is banned.
Accusations
Yannick Noah created a sensation by admitting that he had taken hashish but insisted that others were doing cocaine. He also said that if it was not dealt with strictly there could even be deaths from overdoses.
Boris Becker once accused Thomas Muster of taking drugs. There were rumours about Gabriela Sabatini too and she threatened legal action when her name was discussed as a possible drug user.
Could these accusations by legends be true?
In his autobiography, Andre Agassi confessed he had snorted crystal meth with a friend named Slim. He tested positive in a tournament in 1997, but his explanation that his drink was spiked was accepted, and the entire sordid episode was swept under the carpet. He went on to win many majors.
Was clean chit to him and keeping it a secret fair on clean players?
In 2002, French player Nicholas Escude claimed that many players were on drugs and that the ATP was hiding the results. In 2002 and 2003 seven players tested positive for nandrolone and 53 showed high traces of it.
However only one of the seven, Bohdan Ulihrach, was identified and suspended for two years.
Why were others not named?
Did they go on to win majors? We do not know.
Richard Gasquet tested positive for cocaine at the Miami Open in 2009 but swore that he had never done drugs, saying he had gone clubbing and his drink may have been spiked. His close friend Rafa Nadal gave a bizarre excuse saying Gasquet may have kissed a cocaine user.
Gasquet later said he had indeed kissed a woman, named Pamela, a few times. His sentence was cut from two years to two and half months, but ‘Pamela’ sued him, saying he damaged her reputation and ruined her relationship with her husband.
Was reducing his punishment fair? We do not know.
Transparency and consistency are crucial for retaining faith in fair play, yet aren’t always applied. For instance, while Ulihrach was suspended, Greg Rusedski tested positive yet no action was taken.
With regards to Sharapova, one wonders why her doctor would prescribe her medicine not for sale in the USA? Furthermore, how did Sharapova and her support staff miss as many as six communications saying that meldonium has been put on the banned list?
Will these questions remain unanswered as well?
delbeato
Roar Guru
Tennis - like a number of other sports - is in a similar position to cycling a number of years ago. It's advantageous to the sport, its public appeal and commercial interests - to cover-up doping and other scandalous goings-on. This works until it all blows up and you can't hide it anymore - which is what happened to cycling and is arguably beginning to happen in tennis. Good article Ritesh that demonstrates some of the blatant mistreatment of doping cases by tennis authorities in the past. The major faultline on which tennis (and other sports) is sitting on right now sits in a Spanish court room - with lawyers fighting over whether to use a large number of blood bags to incriminate (mostly Spanish) sporting dopers, or destroy them. The doping doctor from whom they were seized - Dr Fuentes - has already spoken candidly about the magnitude of what would happen, were the DNA from the bags made available to anti-doping authorities. Rafa Nadal issued a strong denial of having doped last week.
delbeato
Roar Guru
Doping specifically refers to an association with sports competition. This is why indulging in recreational drugs away from sporting competition is not part of the WADA rules. WADA aren't arbiters of morality or full-time guardians of athletes' health - they are only concerned with doping, and its impact on sport and athletes.
delbeato
Roar Guru
WADA have 3 criteria for a substance or method to make its prohibited list - 1. performance enhancing, 2. damaging to health, 3. against the spirit of sport. To be prohibited a substance or method must satisfy at least 2 of 3 criteria. Water and carbs satisfy #1 above, but not #2 or #3. Meldonium arguably satisfies all 3 criteria. But in any case, it's not up to athletes to re-interpret the rationale for prohibited substances - they just need to keep them out of their bodies. FYI to BrainsTrust - HGH is prohibited. It's not undetectable - cases like the Essendon FC have taught us that.
Ritesh Misra
Roar Guru
Correct. I missed it , Aussie Open Champion Korda indeed was banned after he tested positive for steroids a few months after being a Majors champion. He reached woeld No 2 and also had reached a FO Final 6 years earlier
Ritesh Misra
Roar Guru
Thanks for the clarification regarding majority of recreational drugs banned only on days of competition
Mister Football
Roar Guru
The author wrote: "Astonishingly, many argued that because cocaine is a recreational drug it’s okay to use, but the law is clear: being a stimulant, it is banned. " One small clarification, the majority of recreational drugs (if not all of them) are only banned on days of commpetition - on any other day, you can dope yourself blind, and it is perfectly ok under the WADA rules.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Not much rhyme or reason to the WADA Prohibited List - there's stacks of stuff out there that is every bit as "performance enhancing" as Meldonium, but it's not on the Prohibited List. Here is an interesting take on why certain things make it on the Prohibited List, and others don't, and it has become a question of (Western) morality as opposed to out and out science. http://theconversation.com/sharapova-drugs-and-the-nature-bias-56006 In the present case, it's worth noting that 99 athletes from the former Soviet bloc have tested positive to Meldonium in just two months, in the meantime, a range of substances are available to Western athletes which they can take to their heart's content because they are not on the Prohibited List.
BrainsTrust
Guest
There are primary school children that would have more brains than WADA as far as performance enhancement. Cocaine and other drugs have negative effects that are far stronger than the slight positive effects. Alcohol is not banned but if you look at WADA's logic it shoud be banned. As far as perormance enhancement drugs in tennis, any muscle enhancing its going to much more effective for women than men. The big one would be HGH, its undetectable the only drawback is it needs to be injected directly into the body. It could also help tennis players grow taller before their growth plates fuse , remember height is a massive advantage in tennis Meladonium on the other hand, who knows if its worth taking, and its easily detectatble,. so you would have to be a coplete idiot to take it. Whatever AFL and NRL have got going with the Australian media needs to be looked at by any drug taking tennis players.
richo
Guest
Peter Korda??