USA TODAY International Edition
SHARAPOVA DID HER TIME, SO FRENCH SNUB IS UNFAIR
Unlike others, she owned up to her mistakes
Maria Sharapova was, is and always will be someone who cheated.
For 10 years, she took a substance that turned out to be performance enhancing, continued to take it after it was banned and said she was using it for medical reasons while going to great lengths for several years to hide from her doctors the fact that she was taking it.
No matter how much you might like, respect or cheer for her, that’s not good.
But Sharapova, 30, is more than just a cheater. She also is someone who has served her time. She was suspended for 15 months for using meldonium, the banned substance in question, coming back last month. She was ranked 26th in the world when she was banned. She’s 211th now.
Her last Grand Slam victory came at the 2014 French Open, and she has faced injuries and declining results since. To serve a suspension of more than one year at this point in her career was, in a word, devastating. Deserved, absolutely, but also devastating.
So it’s safe to say that this is an athlete who has been punished — and a person who deserves the chance to come back to her sport and resume her career in earnest.
As someone who was critical of Sharapova last year, I am glad she’s back. She’s good for tennis. She’s good for international sport. There has always been a lot to like: the teenager who wandered into the press room at Wimbledon, shaking the hand of every reporter she met; the superstar who elegantly spoke about the importance of being a role model for girls at a Women’s Sports Foundation dinner; the disgraced veteran who announced to the world that she had tested positive for meldonium last year, not hiding or lying like so many before her.
As journalists, we don’t cheer for the athletes we cover, but I hope Sharapova gets every opportunity to recapture some of the greatness that propelled her to five Grand Slam titles. Perhaps that will happen. Perhaps it won’t. But she has served her suspension, and she deserves the chance to try.
Which brings us to the decision Tuesday by French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli to not grant a wild- card berth to Sharapova for the French Open.
“I’m very sorry for Maria, very sorry for her fans,” he said. “They might be very disappointed, she might be very disappointed. ... This suspension is over and she can take her path toward new success. But while there can be a wild card for return from injury, there can’t be a wild card for return from doping.”
Wild- card berths are offered at the tournament’s discretion, so it’s his call. But is it the right one?
Steve Simon, the head of the Women’s Tennis Association, says no.
“There are no grounds for any member of the ( tennis anti- doping program) to penalize any player beyond the sanctions set forth in the final decision resolving these matters,” Simon told the Associated Press.
Instead of freelancing on his own brand of justice, wouldn’t Giudicelli have been better off inviting Sharapova, a two- time French Open champion, back to the tournament and encouraging her to speak out about her mistakes at her opening news conference? Not only would it have been the right thing to do, the publicity and interest surrounding her appearance in Paris also wouldn’t have hurt the FTF’s bottom line.
Now her return to Grand Slam play will come at Wimbledon qualifying next month.
To Sharapova’s credit, she answered Giudicelli’s snub with words of hope.
“If this is what it takes to rise up again, then I am in it all the way, everyday,” she wrote on Twitter. “No words, games, or actions will ever stop me from reaching my own dreams. And I have many.”
That might be the only attitude to have given that she still seems to be serving her punishment.