rules
Posted on 06/08/2016 8:59:41 AM PDT by simpson96
LONDON (CBSNewYork/AP) — Maria Sharapova was suspended for two years Wednesday for testing positive for meldonium at the Australian Open.
The five-time Grand Slam champion was provisionally suspended by the International Tennis Federation in early March, when she announced at a news conference in Los Angeles that she failed a doping test in January.
Sharapova said then she was not aware that the World Anti-Doping Agency had barred athletes from using meldonium, also known as mildronate, as of Jan. 1.
Her lawyer, John Haggerty, said Sharapova took the substance after that date.
Wednesday’s ruling said Sharapova did not intend to cheat, but bore “sole responsibility” and “very significant fault” for the positive test.
In addition to testing positive at the Australian Open, she also failed a test for meldonium in an out-of-competition control in Moscow on Feb. 2, the ITF said.
Sharapova vowed Wednesday to appeal the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
(Excerpt) Read more at newyork.cbslocal.com ...
only American athletes are allowed to dope and get away with it! didn’t this girl know?
She should have changed her name to "Clinton".
what ever tiny amount of dope this girl took pales in comparison to whatever the Williams sisters have been taking for the last decade that makes them look like male body builders.
rules
Are these organizations going overboard with what substances they're banning? It seems weird someone could use something for years, and then it's banned.
You are wrong. The Williams have good genetics and the intensity of the workouts produce the ‘end’ results. No pun.
look at the eyes of ANY top US sprinter in the minutes before a race and you will clearly see they are on something.
I have no idea how US athletes continue to get away with it.
Apparently they just stay a step ahead of what’s being banned.
If it were up to me i’d take blood, nail and hair samples from every top 5 winner and keep them on file for future testing (when whatever they are on and banned at a later date). If such a system was implemented I suspect nearly every record for the past 40 years+ would be overturned.
Many high level and pro athletes will tell you that at the highest levels of all athletic competition the use of PEDs is around 90%.
It’s actually pretty typical. The dopers generally run ahead of the agencies. The agencies always have to deal with 2 problems: first figuring out if said substance actually does enhance performance (the number of rumored enhancers is much higher than the number that actually do something), then they have to figure out how to detect it in blood and urine samples (no point in banning something you can’t detect).
They get away with it because governing bodies want them to, or are at least ambivalent. Who thinks a mediocre pitcher like Jake Arrieta isn’t doping?
Yes, masking strategies are very good, and natural substances can be carefully absorbed into the ‘high normal’ range. But political correctness influences doping like everything else (thus the Williams sisters).
Most of the big-time governing bodies keep samples for up to 8-10 years.
Anyone that believes the US just magically wins most athletic competitions because we are just somehow magically better because we are American is kidding themselves.
It is my belief that US athletes leverage the US technological edge by taking cutting edge drugs that haven't been banned yet while simultaneously cracking down on their foreign competition using drugs our athletes were using not long ago but that are now banned.
How could that lovely girl be anything but NOT GUILTY???
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'Good genetics' is in the eye of the beholder. ;-)
meldonium?
Sounds like a country in a Marx Bro.s movie
That’s it. Her professional tennis career is over.
Well, you can still punish people if you catch them doing it by other means than sampling their body fluids. Seems like even if their is no test for some PED the PED could still be banned.
Freegards
Two words - Lance Armstrong
This substance was apparently on the borderline between a ‘supplement’ and ‘drug’ and was legal before January 1. It appears that she didn’t pay attention to the rules change. She’s responsible and deserves some punishment. Two years seems fairly harsh, given the relatively short careers of women’s tennis players.
I’m not sure that we shouldn’t rethink the whole approach to drug testing. In team sports where strength or speed results in competitive advantages but the outcome is based primarily on skills and teamwork, it’s difficult enough to prevent people from cheating. In individual sports such as cycling, track or swimming, the incentive is so great that it’s virtually impossible to prevent it. For something like the 100m sprint, the difference in reward between being the #1 sprinter in the world and the #12 sprinter inot the world is so great that it’s hard not to be tempted to cheat.
And if a substance boosts performance, but doesn’t cause long term harm to the athletes health, I’m not sure that it should be illegal at all.
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