Justice: Maria Sharapova wins appeal, suspension reduced from two years to 15 months
Maria Sharapova's two-year ban for using meldonium, an over-the-counter Russian drug that was made illegal on New Year's Day, has been shortened from two years to 15 months, the Court of Arbitration for Sport revealed Tuesday in a scathing indictment of the original ruling from the International Tennis Federation. This means Sharapova can return to the court on April 26, 2017.
It was an unsurprising verdict given the harshness of Sharapova's original ban from the ITF in June. Then, it was declared Sharapova "unintentionally" broke the rules, but still gave her a massive, career-threatening suspension. That ban, plus the months it took to announce it, wasted of a year at the backside of Sharapova's career.
Though acknowledging the use was unintentional, the ITF still blasted Sharapova for her various missteps, suggesting she hid her use at multiple opportunities, wasn't up front about taking the drug, hadn't spoken with a doctor about meldonium in years and was silent about it with her entourage. The ITF's 33-page ruling artfully ended with the conclusion, "she is the sole author of her own misfortune." The CAS ruling determined that there was "some degree of fault" with Sharapova's handling of the situation but that "it does not agree with many of the conclusions of the Tribunal," hence the shortening of her suspension.
Sharapova will now be eligible to play three of the 2017's four Grand Slams. She'll turn 30 one week before her suspension is set to end.
“I’ve gone from one of the toughest days of my career last March when I learned about my suspension to now, one of my happiest days, as I found out I can return to tennis in April," Sharapova said in a statement.
Thus ends a (still) bizarre saga that started with a bizarre revelatory press conference and was followed at every turn by confusing findings, like when the World Anti-Doping Agency, which put the drug on the banned list, hadn't researched how long meldonium remained in a system — an alarming lack of oversight that's far worse than a player not checking to see whether a common drug had been added to the banned list.
The CAS said its decision to lower the suspension "was not about an athlete who cheated," but in the "degree of fault" that she has for letting a drug remain in her system when it was newly illegal. "Under no circumstances, therefore, can the Player be consider an 'intentional doper.'"
It's a fascinating document and one that suggests Sharapova was subjected to the scrutiny because of who she was, not what she did. Given that other players were getting short suspensions or no suspensions at all, Sharapova's two years were Draconian and 17 months, while better and almost completed, shouldn't be seen as the victory it is. The ITF/WADA screwed up worse than Sharapova.
The handling of her case was far different than how the ITF dealt with Ukrainian-born American Varvara Lepchenko, who served no suspension time despite a positive test before Sharapova's (the concentration of the drug was far higher in Sharapova's system, however). Lepchenko was eventually found to have "no fault or negligence" after multiple tests showed the drug slowly leaving her system. Sharapova slyly acknowledged this in her statement.
"I have taken responsibility from the very beginning for not knowing that the over-the-counter supplement I had been taking for the last ten years was no longer allowed," Sharapova said. "But I also learned how much better other Federations were at notifying their athletes of the rule change, especially in Eastern Europe where [meldonium] is commonly taken by millions of people."
