Sharapova busted for meldonium

Claims she has been taking the drug for 10 years for clinical reasons. Same drug as the "Swedish" cheater. Her excuse is that she didn't know it was added to the banned list, unacceptable for someone so

high profile

i think there will be a lot more positives...it seems that WADA should have alerted people who had previously tested positive for meldonium in past years that the drug had been added to the list, vs just adding it to an e-mail they send out?

bs, throw the book at her... look at people like two of the most prominent men with unbelievable physique and stamina (and nationality). It's so obvious that they are doping yet nobody cares.

What sport is not affected?

so it's WADA's responsibility to keep athletes clean? Line them all up one after the other and ban the lot!

She's using a drug used to treat heart failure for 10 yrs and she's only 28 yo. Hmmm.

Seems that adding meldonium to the list is nicely catching out anyone who was in the grey area before - wonder how many more who weren't careful are going to be caught out... Must mean that even more were using it before though and I'm sure it's not the only substance like it.

HeyHey wrote:

She's using a drug used to treat heart failure for 10 yrs and she's only 28 yo. Hmmm.

How about them NOP TUEs, hmmmm....

bufo wrote:

Seems that adding meldonium to the list is nicely catching out anyone who was in the grey area before - wonder how many more who weren't careful are going to be caught out... Must mean that even more were using it before though and I'm sure it's not the only substance like it.

It could be that the meldonium has a long hang-time tendency: meaning it takes some time to flush out of a user's system.

Russians!

What the heck goes on over there.

Although I suppose she doesn't do much in russia anymore.

So what? She's HOT!

Sounds like an honest mistake. She had been taking that medication for many years and then they added it to the list without noticing her.

In the end, she is still the most attractive tennis player. Not as BUFF as Serena Williams, but she has nice features.

She'll probably get away with a warning and that's fine by me.

Strange but not suprising. I managed to watch Hajo Seppelt's show last night on WDR, it sounds like this was a commonly used drug in eastern Europe, some studies conducted before it was banned found it 17% of the athletes tested. There are likely going to be more positives, sadly there won't be any retrospective positives. I think most athletes will be off of it by Rio, especially after some high profile positives.

I watched the admission here

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/07/tennis/maria-sharapova-tennis-injuries/index.html

She took full responsibility for it and was transparent. She's still beautiful. Nothing will change that.

As I wrote in the other thread, before judging these athletes as dopers, let's not forget that meldonium was added to the prohibited substance list only starting with January 1, 2016. Combined with that meldonium has pretty long lifecycle of 2 months in the body she could have taken it in late November 2015 when it was still legal and tested positive for doping this January or even early February.

In upcoming months we will see a lot of athletes falling for meldonium. Some of them might have not been informed that it is included in the prohibited substance list, some might have forgotten but most I suppose might have not known that it's life cycle in the body is that long and were taking it till the end of the year.

None of that is a good excuse for an elite runner. They are careless and deserve it if they are that dense.

There is no excuse, this is a drug for heart failure, angina and Parkinson's, why are some of the fittest athletes in the world taking it? Other than because it's a performance enhancer.

So is aspirin.

Of course it's not an excuse, but I feel sorry for her and those others since I'm sure it's just a silly human mistake.

I really can't believe that any elite athlete would want to knowingly risk a career-ending ban just because of some meldonium. It's not EPO, HGH or testosterone. It's impact on performance is rather insignificant compared to other drugs.

Exactly this! And I would bet that many of our "clean" athletes are also taking drugs that just aren't illegal YET.