Maria Sharapova has been banned from pro tennis for two years for a violation of the sport's anti-doping policy, the International Tennis Federation announced Wednesday.
The ban will be back-dated to Jan. 26 of this year, when the violation was discovered and Sharapova began serving her provisional suspension. The five-time Grand Slam champion tested positive during the Australian Open for a drug called meldonium, which had been placed on the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned substance list on Jan. 1. The drug is manufactured in Latvia, and has never been approved by the FDA for use in the United States.
Sharapova owned up to the failed test at a press conference on March 7, but insisted she was unaware the drug - which she said she'd been taking on and off for 10 years to help manage a heart condition and chronic flu symptoms - had been banned. She attributed the oversight to the fact that she knew the drug by a different name (mildronate).
Sharapova wasn't the only athlete to miss the amendment to the drug's name and status. In the wake of meldonium's addition to the banned list, nearly 200 athletes produced positive samples. WADA announced in April that certain positive tests could be excused, owing to the fact that the agency lacked a clear understanding of how long the drug takes to exit the system. However, Sharapova never sought to disprove or even deny that she'd used it after the Jan. 1 cut-off date.
Sharapova announced immediately after the ruling was rendered by an independent tribunal that she will appeal the suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
In handing out the two-year suspension, the independent panel ruled that Sharapova did not knowingly break the rules. If it found that she had, the suspension - according to the language laid out in the ITF rulebook - would have been four years.
The tribunal did find her at fault, however, for not disclosing her use of the drug on any of the seven doping control forms submitted between Oct. 22, 2014 and Jan. 26, 2016. According to evidence reviewed by the panel, Sharapova's affiliation with the doctor who prescribed her mildronate in the first place ceased in 2013. After that, she continued to ingest the drug without consulting another doctor about it, and without informing anyone but her father and her agent.
"The contravention of the anti-doping rules was not intentional as Ms. Sharapova did not appreciate that Mildronate contained a substance prohibited from 1 January 2016," reads the conclusion of the tribunal's 33-page decision. "However she does bear sole responsibility for the contravention, and very significant fault, in failing to take steps to check whether the continued use of this medicine was permissible.
"If she had not concealed her use of Mildronate from the anti-doping authorities, members of her own support team and the doctors whom she consulted, but had sought advice, then the contravention would have been avoided. She is the sole author of her own misfortune."
Sharapova was the world's highest-paid female athlete at the time of her failed test, but with her corporate sponsors severing their ties in the aftermath, she's since been surpassed by Serena Williams.
