Maria Sharapova Files Appeal With CAS, Seeks Full Elimination Of 2-Year Doping Ban

I’d be interested in seeing her arguments. The proportionality arguments she seemed to raise in the underlying proceeding were about how much money she’d lose with a two-year ban, which isn’t the most compelling argument when you’re asking a panel to exercise discretion.

June 14th, 2016 at 10:15 pm

She should ask for a hearing, and she could scream her arguments at them, and turn her back on them until SHE is ready to argue.

June 15th, 2016 at 11:34 am

this is a very interesting piece on bias problems in tennis, tangentially – or perhaps explicitly – linked to maria’s case, but much further historically, and in the present, beyond that.

https://medium.com/@jurasick/the-bias-problem-in-tennis-dc3bbb621c37#.uvqm6u7d4

June 15th, 2016 at 9:25 pm

@jane:

Thank you. The author said very eloquently what I was trying to explain on this pages for months now. He also tackled a few problems I avoid to write about, since they don’t seem tennis related. But all of this was well know to anybody who doesn’t exclusively rely on anglo-saxon press…

The newest example is about Russian hooligans in France. Nobody has been arrested. And here, you have a photo of “Russian” football hooligans:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vHxhYEGkEYY/V18YzkVujkI/AAAAAAAAFm8/ioQRBBvldbAufOoJcaZ7POwlILDgOBgCQCLcB/s1600/Ck1JWFqWsAAb3P9.jpg

You immediately notice that they are blond, pale, and look like typical Russians.

June 15th, 2016 at 10:02 pm

A ban is a ban. Where will it end. Two years is a reasonable banning period for a cheating drug taker. She was taking a chance and was caught. Earning big money makes people greedy.
Chuck her out.

June 16th, 2016 at 7:54 am

So… why wasn’t Carl Lewis banned when caught?

June 16th, 2016 at 8:32 am

mat4,
Under todays rules he probably should have. Different rules back then…
Then there was his rival Ben Johnson…

June 16th, 2016 at 9:54 am

skeezer has a point.

Speaking of Ben Johnson, this endorsement for Cheetah Energy drink is not to be missed…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq_2lmCXeDk

June 16th, 2016 at 10:27 am

@skeezer:

I checked, it’s the opposite. Under today’s rules, he wouldn’t be troubled. The level of ephedrine required are over 10 now.

Under the rules in 1988, he should have been disqualified. Anyway, the USOC covered many athletes, 18 of them won Olympic medals.

June 16th, 2016 at 10:28 am

… is higher now… instead over 10 now

June 16th, 2016 at 10:29 am

And those are real commercials, not some Saturday Night Live parody.

Hard to believe.

June 16th, 2016 at 10:45 am

mat4,
You’re right, my wires were crossed on that. Thanks..
elina,
Hard to believe is right! ;)

June 16th, 2016 at 10:57 am

Maria’s example of being “selected” for drug testing should be a warning to All” tennis players. Let them know that as a tennis player unless they develop a strong Fan based in ONE country they will be the ones selected for drug testing. For many, many years I have seen behavior from some players that absolutely indicated some use of steroids,and or
drug- use; some even had to take months off each year(under the guise of injury) to get their bodies clean again while offering to be drug tested during their clean time; then back to the drugs etc. Luckily, for them, they had enough of a strong Fan base to avoid inopportune drug testing. However, for Maria, who is divided between two countries and has focused on the sport of tennis rather than devlopping “Fans”, she is “dead-meat” to be used as an example. Players learn your lesson well; do not just focus on tennis; but work on getting as many Fans behind you as possible. In other words, if you bring in enough $$$$$$$$ for the TEnnis CEO”s you will survive any test.

June 16th, 2016 at 1:20 pm

Ooopsey;

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/18/sports/olympics/russia-barred-rio-summer-olympics-doping.html?_r=0

June 17th, 2016 at 9:08 pm

I’ve heard the argument that Maria lacks a fan base in the locker room, but not outside of it. How is she the highest earning female tennis player? But I suppose life is boring without conspiracy theories.

Of course, this could have been avoided if she had tasked anyone – ANYONE – on her ginormous team with the simple task of reviewing the list of banned substances. I suppose that means she would have had to tell someone she was taking the drug, though. Decisions, decisions.

June 17th, 2016 at 9:33 pm

BBB: Who is in Sharapova’s “team”?

June 29th, 2016 at 6:10 pm

Russian doctor (not the original – one she consulted in 2015), American doctor, coach, trainer, physio, nutritionist, Yuri, agent, agent’s flunky…. That’s just based on the tribunal’s report. I have no idea how many other people she employs in her various undertakings.

June 29th, 2016 at 6:29 pm

If I had to put the finger on someone (other than MaSha) it would be the doctor who prescribed it and/or was treating her at the time of the ban. But the whole thing is BS anyway.

June 29th, 2016 at 8:55 pm

She stopped using that doctor in 2012 (perhaps sooner, can’t remember) and she didn’t tell her current doctor she was on it. She chose not to assign anyone (except maybe her agent) with the responsibility for checking the list. It’s shocking, someone with so much at stake and the means to hire people to take care of this very basic issue.

I recommend reading the decision.

June 30th, 2016 at 3:55 am

The best known states where doping is/was rampant were the DDR, where it was organized on a state level (we know, today, that the German football team in 1954 was doping; cases like Kornelia Ender, were famous), and the USA, the real Mecca of doping, where there is a culture of PED.

I hope that nobody is credulous enough to believe that Maria, living in a country where doping is widespread, where the whole Olympic cycling team was doping with the knowledge of the USADA, where Marion Jones fell only because it couldn’t be hidden any more, and the same applies to Lance Armstrong (just read the “Secret race” — books were published how his whole team doped — where Florence Griffith died of PED use, would take PED without medical supervision.

There is no possibility whatsoever that at least part of her team didn’t know, that her doctor didn’t know, that nobody checked the list of banned substances. She was framed like Roger Rabbit, because she is Russian.

Read the interview with Angel Herrera — and you would know that when a serious athlete wants to dope, there is practically no way you can catch him. Each and every time a serious doping affair made the first page of the newspapers, it was because of an insider.

And there are no countries out of it. Where do you think French and Italian football teams go for sanguine transfusions? In Swiss! In Europe, Germany, Swiss, Russia, Spain are big centres. The US an even bigger, with Mexico nearby.

And I tend to believe that Sharapova was taking legal supplements rather than doping. Not so long ago, a famous tennis player won a slam tournament, spoke of big plans, then suddenly retired. She lost 30 pounds in a short time after the end of her career. Such cases should be investigated more thoroughly, although S.M. hinted in a question I asked him that it was a cover up. You’re just looking in the wrong direction. JJ, by her own admission, got 12 pounds of muscles in one month working with G.R. Without taking anything? I lifted weights in my youth — who is she kidding?

Don’t be gullible. The Sharapova case is a farce.

June 30th, 2016 at 4:52 am