The best little tidbit from the ITF report: (Dr Skalny’s instructions to Sharapova)
I guess her incipient heart disease/diabetes/magnesium deficiency/whatever really flares up during those big matches. :rolleyes:
Really?
Given how many great players have been banned over the years it’s difficult to imagine one NOT using performance enhancing drugs.
And maybe we should just get it through our collective heads that professional athlete careers are usually quite short. Unlikely to make a comeback at 30? How about unlikely to be playing at that level regardless at 30. Compare to athletes dropping out 5-10 years earlier than 30 due to injuries or dropping performance. Pro athletes need to have Profession #2 lined up and ready to go by 25.
And if all the top players are relying on being full of painkillers in order to perform that, too, is a sign of something deeply wrong with the sports world. Playing injured because you can’t feel the pain is why later on in life so many athletes are crippled.
Exactly. If it’s not against the rules, it’s fair game, even by the most restrictive standards.
Every athlete is at least doing everything they can that’s not against the rules in order give themselves an edge. You can’t do otherwise in something so hyper-competitive.
I wouldn’t even get to the “gray area” until you get to things that are technically against the rules but are not properly enforced. There’s an argument that that could possibly be considered cheating–even though the most competitive will do it.
That said, ignorance of the rules is not an excuse. This is her livelihood. She has to read them. If she had trouble reading the rules in electronic form, the solution would be to tell someone and get a hard copy.
It’s just a BS excuse she came up with if she got caught.
You really should read the judgment or you are just going to make yourself look ignorant over and over and over.
It’s not the job of the IFT to make sure she wasn’t violating the rules. That’s the job of her coach, trainer, nutritionist (!), physiotherapist, and/or medical advisor.
She employs an entire team of people who are happy to help her comply with the rules (their livelihood is on the line, too, after all.) And despite regularly disclosing a range of other substances, she chose to deliberately and repeatedly conceal this one from pretty much everyone, including a pretty straightforward form that would have been a great fail safe if she had used it.
I have no idea why she did this, but this wasn’t simple ignorance.
Yup. I’ve been rather a fan of Sharapova, grunting and all. But it strains credibility to consider her a poor victim in all of this. Two years seems fair and if she never competes at a high level again…well, I’m sure wallowing in her estimated ~$100 million fortune will help mollify her disappointment ;).
I’m just now seeing this thread, but I read the Decision in its entirety yesterday, and I’m in complete agreement with you. Based on the apparent lies and deception that she and her representative put out there, I think she’s extremely fortunate to not have gotten the full four years. The fact that she’s now calling this “unfairly harsh” is just silly. She got out of receiving four years based on a technicality of how “intentional” is defined by the ITF.
I had some sympathy for her before yesterday, but the Decision relieved me of that.
Sharapova to get expedited ruling on her appeal. At least she (and we) won’t have to wait too long to find out whether the two years sticks or not.