“Double fault, Miss Sharapova.”

What to make of the Maria Sharapova drugs scandal? Well, that all depends on what side of the net you’re on …

Sent: London, Tuesday, 8 March 2016 14:42
Subject: How about if we write something about Maria Sharapova?

Happy Women’s Day! I suppose there’s been the usual run on roses and chocolates! How about if we write something about Maria Sharapova? For me, the most interesting thing about the story is not the reaction here in the West (which is still divided between those who want to believe her, and those who don’t), but the reaction of the head of the Russian Tennis Association, who said that it was “nonsense.”

What did he mean: that it wasn’t true, or it didn’t matter? And perhaps we could develop the story into a look at what progress (if any) Russian athletics has made in cleaning up its system, and if Russian athletes will be going to the Olympics.

Sent: Moscow, March 8, 2016, 15:03

I’ll read up about the story now. But here are a few initial thoughts.

1: Tarpishchev, the president of the Russian Tennis Association, is a brutal sort of guy who doesn’t exactly mince his words (he referred to Venus and Serena as the “Williams brothers”).
2: Generally speaking, you can only really sympathise with Sharapova: she’s been taking meldonium for 10 years, it only became a banned substance on January 1, it takes a month to get it out of your system, while the Australian Open took place between January 18 and January 31. So let them first prove that it wasn’t in December that she took it))

Sent: London, Tuesday, 8 March 2016 15:20

You mean that a professional tennis champion with an army of medical advisers didn’t understand the effect of a drug (not licensed outside Russia and the Baltics) on her body for 10 years! The tennis people sent out in September the first notice saying that meldonium was going to be banned in January. And they sent out another 5 notices after that! It doesn’t matter if she took it or not in December …

Sent: Moscow, March 8, 2016, 16:07

Sharapova hardly seems like a person who doesn’t think about her health. So it’s unlikely that she’d knowingly been taking something harmful for ten years. As for the fact that the drug’s licence was geographically limited, that doesn’t automatically make it a doping drug. It was declared a prohibited substance only on 01.01.2016. Prior to that it was 100% legal for use in sport – you could take it by the spoonful …:))

I take back my comments re December – athletes had received advance warning about the ban.

So, if it were up to me, I’d introduce a transition period for newly prohibited substances: the first time you test positive you get nothing more than a warning, and you’re disqualified only after being caught once again.

There are lots of things to be sorted out. WADA’s Independent Commission released a report last November accusing Russian coaches, doctors and officials of involvement in numerous doping violations. Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) experts were exposed as the (cheating) athletes’ primary sources of assistance. Three days prior to the WADA inspection, for instance, they destroyed 1417 doping control samples, as well as allowing a drugs laboratory to be staffed by FSB personnel during the Sochi Olympics – and this despite the fact that RUSADA is a Russian subdivision of WADA.

Russian athletes have been suspended from all international competition, and the question of their participation in the Rio Olympics remains unresolved. RUSADA has lost its WADA accreditation; and the anti-doping laboratory (where the 1400-odd control samples were destroyed) has been shut down.

In February of this year, two former RUSADA chiefs – Vyacheslav Sinyov and Nikita Kamaev – passed away in rapid succession. Kamaev was talking of writing a book about doping in Russia, shortly before his death …

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has claimed that it will take three to four years for Russia to resolve all its doping problems completely. Today, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke out against the politicisation of sport. But no matter how dodgy Russian sports officials may be, sport is still a better-organised domain than politics. In sport, you can’t just sit things out in your own bubble of sovereignty; and import substitution isn’t an option. In sport, if “our lads” or “our girls” are to emerge victorious, they simply have to play by international rules. In sport, then, a situation where the decisions of international bodies fail to be implemented is unthinkable (in other words, you simply couldn’t imagine a scenario in sport where Strasbourg issues a decree, and Russia’s Supreme Court ignores it, refuses to comply, etc.)

Oh, and about the Olympics as well. It’d be right if our athletes got to go. Because if the country’s sports officials are prepared to cooperate, if they’re not blindly denying anything and everything, honest athletes who may only have a single shot at the Olympics shouldn’t have to suffer. What do you think?

Sent: London, Tuesday, 8 March 2016 18:20

I think we have to do what we can to move on from the default positions, which on one side of the net say, “Of course, she’s guilty, she’s a Russian athlete;” and on the other that “She’s a Russian athlete, of course they’re having a go at her.”