Whether or not you are on Maria Sharapova‘s side, it can’t be argued that her career and legacy have been permanently damaged by the failed Meldonium doping test and in a recent interview on Movistar the Russian stated that it was the fault of her agent Max Eisenbud.
Tennis World USA quotes Sharapova:
When there are more people on a team, each has its own task. I worked with the doctor and I told my manager to check all the banned drugs, it was the end of 2015 and he had personal problems.
He didn’t and we know how it turned out. It was a serious mistake. The ITF accused me that I was hiding from taking Meldonium, but in reality I never did that, it was very painful and I felt vulnerable.
The five-time Grand Slam champion Sharapova bravely went out in front of the world and announced her failed drug test in March 2016. In June 2016 the ITF tribunal concluded that she did not do the drug treatment for the purpose of obtaining a performance-enhancing substance. With their decision of a two-year suspension, later reduced to 15 months, the ITF tribunal unanimously concluded that what Sharapova did was not intentional.
In April 2017 Sharapova made her comeback at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, while less than three years later she retired from tennis at the age of 32.
It is unreasonable to expect of Maria to play tournaments and do all her other off-court projects and at the same time read dozens of pages of content about new banned substances. It is clear that it was the fault of her agent or someone else in her team. Things like that can happen, everybody makes mistakes. Unfortunately, Maria will never completely clear her name, even though it was concluded that her Meldonium use was unintentional.
Her body, her responsibility. Knowing the rules and regulations that govern the WTA, she still needs to know what she was putting in her body.
Loser Maria, shouldn’t be allowed to blames someone else for her loser privilege. Was it his fault she was making so much money not play a sport she was no good at. If the WTA would have made her stop her from making that awful shirking noise to begin with none of the real professional players wouldn’t have lost to her to begin with. It’s her own fault.
Nikki, I agree. The substance was not on the banned list during the most part of her career and it was probably easy to be overlooked by both her agent and herself.
Archie D, it is her responsibility and in the end she was the only one suffering the consequences.
Make It Right, you can claim many things but not that Maria was not good at tennis.