The tennis world is still reeling from Maria Sharapova’s disclosure last week that she had tested positive for a banned drug in an investigation conducted last January, just before the Australia Open.
So are the manufacturers of luxury goods, of which she is a richly-compensated brand ambassador.
From the International Tennis Federation (ITF) the 7th ranked woman tennis player in the world faces the prospect of the standard four-year ban from competitive tennis that will almost effectively end her playing career. From her sponsors, the glamorous Russian stands to forfeit the lucrative deals that have made her the highest paid and arguably the wealthiest female athlete in the world.
Full marks to her publicity and public relations machine for swinging into pre-emptive damage control.
Instead of waiting for the World Anti-Doping Agency to make the finding public, they orchestrated the televised appearance seen around the world that was at once a subdued display of betrayed innocence, an expression of remorse, She said the whole thing was a huge mistake, that she accepted responsibility for it, and that she would like to be given another chance
She admitted almost tearfully that she had been taking the drug Medlonium since 2006 for a variety of health issues and did not know that it had recently been added to the list of banned drugs. It was a “huge mistake,” she said,
The anti-doping agency banned the drug because it helps athletes by delivering more oxygen to muscles, thus potentially enhancing performance, and although not a few athletes have been suspended this year for testing positive for it. Sharapova said she was not aware that it had been added to the banned list.
The unfolding story suggests otherwise.
The indications are that she had been warned by email up to five times about the drug. Perhaps the most pointed warning came in a December 22, 2015, email, with the subject line “Main Change to the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme, 2016.”
Sharapova insists she had not opened that email.
An earlier mail dated December 18 had conveyed a notice to the same effect, but Sharapova said the notice was buried deep in the copy and that she had not read it to the end. Nor was it clear, from all the warnings, she said, that the drug she was taking, mildonate, was the same thing as the banned drug Medlonium.
When it was pointed out that the manufacturers intended the drug to be used only two or three times a year over a six-week period, Sharapova said she had not been using it continuously for 10 years as her earlier statement might have suggested.
The drug at issue is manufactured in Latvia and distributed only in the Balkan countries. It is not approved for use in Europe and the United States. This would seem to suggest that Sharapova had a special arrangement for her supply. Her legal team insists that, whatever the case, the dosage she has been taking is too small to be effective.
Given all the circumstances, the ITF is going to have a dickens to determine the appropriate sanctions.
As I followed the drama, one question kept tugging at my mind: What if it had been Serena Williams? Serena who holds 21 grand slam titles under her belt – Sharapova has five; Serena the best female tennis player in the world and one of the best players of any gender who ever wielded a racquet; Serena, probably the world’s most vilified athlete?
No serious charge of doping has ever swirled around her, but if you attended only to the sensational press and social media, you would think she is just a dope sack on two legs. With those sturdy calf muscles and the bulging biceps and the rippling abs, what further evidence does anyone need that she practically lives on steroids?
That, they insist, is the secret of her phenomenal success, not her preternatural skills, her usually superb conditioning, and her fierce competitiveness, her mental toughness, and her dedication to her game – the factors that have placed her in a class by herself and on which she has drawn to beat all comers, including Sharapova in 18 of their last 19 matches.
This is a manifestation of the racism that runs through sport. In America, it has not got to the point where they throw bananas into the tennis court the way hoodlums throw bananas into the soccer pitch when the competing teams feature black players. You don’t hear the racist catcalls directed at the black players.
But Serena Williams rarely gets the kind of crowd support she gets on foreign soil. Even when she is playing at home against a foreign player, you sense that the crowd is rooting for her opponent. She is on record as saying that she feels more comfortable playing abroad than at home. I have not inspected the record, but I suspect she has won more games abroad than at home
So, what if it was Serena that was caught doping?
The reporting would have used up all the synonyms in the Thesaurus for “cheat,” and would have made up new ones. The sports media would have stated flatly that she had juiced up for every match she ever played, and that the only way to redeem the game was to strip her of every title she has ever won, and thereafter to ban her permanently from competitive tennis.
There would have been no end to the name-calling. Sharapova has already been neologised into Shara-Dopa. Who knows what they would have made of Serena’s name? It does not lend itself so easily to neologising as Sharapova does, but I am sure they would have come up with something cute and unforgettable.
Serena’s parents would have been dragged into the matter. I suspect the media would go so far as to assert, without fear and without research, that it was a family affair; that her controversial father had obtained the steroids and had been administering it personally
Everyone of her sponsors would have terminated instead of merely suspending their relationship. Not that she has many sponsors anyway. It is one of the perversities of the system that sponsors would rather treat with a glamorous Number 7 or even No 10 on the circuit than with the very best.
As a result, Serena makes the bulk of her earnings from winning competitions, whereas Sharapova makes hers from endorsements. Her haul from that source alone dwarfs Serena’s total earnings.
I am reminded of another glamorous Russian who came before Sharapova and showed great promise but soon fizzled. Yet, Anna Kournikova made a huge fortune in endorsements, leading Sports Illustrated to quip: “Of what use is a good backhand when you have a hot body?”
Serena does not have the hot body that Sharapova has parlayed into a highly successful brand. But she has something far more enduring – 21 Grand Slam titles, just one short Steffi Graf’s record 22 titles but more impressive in my view, considering that the field in which she won the titles is far deeper than in which Graf ever played, featuring some 20 players, anyone among whom could win a championship, whereas there were only about six such players in Graf’s time.
It is a mark of her class that she has not been smitten with schadenfreude, unlike some of the other female players on the Tour, who would not be sad to see Sharapova sent into early retirement.
