A sad Sharapova announcing her drugs test failure in Los Angeles on Monday night. Photo: Daily Mail UK
Russian-born American tennis star, Maria Sharapova has failed a drug test and is now provisionally suspended from March 12 after testing positive during January’s Australian Open.
Sharapova made the shocking admission in Los Angeles on Monday night. She had tested positive at January’s Australian Open, where she went out in the quarter-final after defeat to fellow American, Serena Williams.
Sharapova, who is the highest-paid female sports star on the planet and a five-time Grand Slam champion, stunned the world by revealing she had tested positive for the banned substance meldonium at the Australian Open, facing a ban of up to four years which would all but end her life as a professional athlete.
“I’ve let my fans down, I’ve let the sport down that I have been playing since the age of four that I love so deeply. I know that with this I face consequences and I don’t want to end my career this way.
“I really hope that I will be given another chance to play this game.”
Daily Mail UK reports that Meldonium was developed to treat patients with chronic heart failure and angina and has also been found to help control diabetes when used with other drugs.
But the World Anti-Doping Agency put it on the banned list from January 1 this year after finding it was being used widely to boost endurance and recovery.
Sharapova, who has been a US citizen since 1994, is the third Russian athlete, after a male cyclist and a female figure skater, to have been caught already.
The latest German TV probe into Russian sport, by the same team which exposed the initial doping scandal, claims that 724 of 4,316 samples collected from Russian athletes in 2015 contained meldonium. Sharapova said she had been taking it for a decade — after being prescribed it by her doctor — but had failed to read a WADA email saying it was now prohibited.
Although meldonium is freely available in her native Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, America’s Food and Drug Administration has never approved it for use.
Former tennis star Jennifer Capriati, whose own physical problems forced her to retire, slammed the Russian American on Twitter.
Capriati, 39, raged: “I’m extremely angry and disappointed. I had to lose my career and never opted to cheat no matter what. Ii had to throw in the towel and suffer.
“I didn’t have the high priced team of drs that found a way for me to cheat and get around the system and wait for science to catch up.”
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