Maria Sharapova’s inconvenient truth: it’s unlikely she was alone

The cold, hard fact is Sharapova benefited from meldonium use.

Maria Sharapova of Russia serves to Belinda Bencic of Switzerland during their fourth round match at the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Maria Sharapova beat Belinda Bencic at Meldonium Park in January. Their fourth-round match at the Australian Open was Sharapova’s final victory before the drug test that brought down her empire.

She prevailed 7-5 7-5 on Rod Laver Arena thanks to the relentless energy and indefatigable drive that have defined her career. Never has Sharapova been knackered. Always has she benefited from a physical edge. Perhaps the difference was meldonium.

An epic dose of mental grit has aided Sharapova. But what else? If she had a heart problem, a decent storyline for a PR-savvy businesswoman, she bizarrely failed to mention it. Her decade of success is tainted for all time.

The issue is not whether she knew about the performance-­enhancing qualities of the drug. The cold hard fact is that she benefited from it. The $US37.1 million in prizemoney? Tainted. The net worth of $US125m? Tainted. The history-making feats of endurance before her bones, muscles and ligaments became brittle? Tainted to the point of being trashed.

Winning was not the only drug. At the French Open, where ­stamina and recovery are crucial, Sharapova won 18 of 21 three-setters. In 2014, she survived four consecutive three-setters, starting with her gruelling fourth-round win over Sam Stosur, to claim the title and complete her career grand slam with a marathon win over Romanian Simona Halep in the final. Mentally she’s always been a tough nut to crack. She’s also been indefatigable.

Bencic has become the asterisk player who was Sharapova’s last victim at Meldonium Park before the Russian lost to Serena Williams on Australia Day and failed a drugs test. Bencic is now sitting in a back room in southern California. She’s asked if she’s peeved by the knowledge that Sharapova had a banned drug in her system when they met at Meldonium Park.

The 19-year-old Swiss is uncomfortable and replies: “I don’t know enough details to answer that. I don’t think it had any effect on the result. Before this year it wasn’t banned, so I don’t want to comment on that, either. I lost a match in Melbourne and I don’t think it (meldonium) made any difference.”

That’s the politically correct answer. But regardless of Sharapova’s Homer Simpson defence of ignoring emails from the World Anti-Doping Agency that no right-minded professional athlete would dismiss, she has conceded her long-term meldonium use.

It was courageous to admit it. It was also damning. Because meldonium aids the flow of blood in the heart. Because meldonium was not approved for use in Sharapova’s country of residence, the US, which meant she needed to go to great lengths to have it supplied from Latvia.

Because as far as anyone knows, she hid her use of a tainted drug from anti-doping authorities and did not request permission to use it for a pre-existing medical condition. Because the use of ­meldonium had become chronic among those seeking a manufactured edge. Sharapova was not flying solo.

A worldwide study in late 2014 found that of 8300 urine samples from athletes, 182 contained meldonium. All were Eastern European athletes. Last year, a Russian study found that 724 of 4316 athletes (a whopping 17 per cent) were using meldonium. That’s a whole lot of elite athletes with angina or there’s been a rat in the room for years.

As world No 2 Andy Murray said at Indian Wells: “You’re just using it for the performance-­enhancing benefits that drug is giving you, and I don’t think that’s right. The stories like this happen regularly now in sports. It seems like it’s almost a weekly occurrence. So I wouldn’t say it’s shocking. I read that 55 athletes have failed tests for that substance since January 1.

“You just don’t expect high level athletes at the top of many different sports to have heart conditions. I find it strange that there’s a prescription drug used for heart conditions and so many athletes competing at the top level of their sport would have that condition. That sounds a bit off to me.”

Ten years of using meldonium. Put the drug in Halep’s system at the French Open and take it out of Sharapova’s. Who has the edge when the match enters its fourth hour in scorching heat? Mel­donium might have cost Halep a major. She has a 0-6 win-loss ­record against Sharapova. Three of those matches have been three-setters. Momentum or mel­donium? “I cannot comment on this,” Halep said.

Of Sharapova’s 210 career three-setters, she’s won 161. That’s a success rate of 76.6 per cent. That’s a staggering figure bettered only by Chris Evert’s 77.55 per cent in the history of the women’s game.

Sharapova has stared them down. She’s also run them down. Petra Kvitova lost to Sharapova in three sets in the Fed Cup final in November. Give Kvitova a shot of meldonium. Who flies through the deciding set?

When Kvitova was asked what supplements she took, she replied: “Vitamin B, vitamin C, calcium and coffee. You cannot risk taking anything else.”

Asked about Sharapova using meldonium for so long, Kvitova, who has a 4-7 win-loss, including all three of their three-setters, replied: “I think if your doctor gives you something that’s not on the banned list, it’s fine. If it’s not on the list, why can’t you take it?”

Because it was an attempt to beat the system by hundreds of athletes. Why take anything at all? “I don’t,” world No 1 Serena Williams said at Indian Wells. “I’m terrified, to be honest. It would just be a really bad situation if that was me. Plus, my sister (Venus) went through a lot of illnesses and with her going through that, she was able to introduce me into a really vegan and raw, kind of really vegetable, whole raw world that I ­really enjoyed.

“And I was able to see a lot of benefits in my game and my body in general from that. Just even from a health perspective, I’ve never been a big fan of taking ­anything.”

Williams was clueless about meldonium. “I’m studying medicine but I’ve never heard of it,” she said. “Maybe I’m not studying hard enough.”

She defended her sport after accusations of match-fixing at the Australian Open and now the black eye of confirmed doping by a leading diva.

“The majority of the players play with integrity,” Williams said. “It’s just like the world. We live in a massive world with billions of ­people, and there are a few people who do things and it makes people scared, but that doesn’t make the whole world a bad situation and a bad place.

“That’s the same thing with tennis. The majority of players here, for years and years and years, really pride themselves on having integrity and playing with that. I think that beyond these two situations, we’re still out there and we’re still working hard.”

Williams flirted with a vegan diet at the 2013 French Open. The flirtation is finished.

“I couldn’t quite give up the chicken,” she said. “And then the tacos kind of crept back into my life. But I don’t eat red meat and a lot of other stuff, and so I was educating myself through Venus on a lot of things to remain healthy.

“I wasn’t tired (at the French Open). It was good. It was really good. I don’t know why I don’t do that more often. Maybe this year I need to get back on that.”

Polish star Agnieszka Rad­wanska has consistently wilted against ­Sharapova. Thirteen losses in 15 ­matches. Six of those losses have been three-setters. They went the distance at the WTA Tour Finals in October and yet again Sharapova powered home.

The same question for Radwanska. Momentum or meldonium? “I’m not a doctor, I don’t know these things that she took or she didn’t take,” she said. “I can’t answer that question for her.”

Sharapova’s inconvenient truth is that meldonium had become the drug of choice for drug cheats. Last year, the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that 490 competitors had it in their systems at the European Games at Azerbaijan. Ten per cent of competitors in 15 sports. Sixty athletes have tested positive this year, according to WADA. Doesn’t anyone open their emails? There are thousands upon thousands of professional tennis players. It would be Sharapova-scale foolish to believe only one tennis player has been using the drug that dragged sport through the mud from Meldonium Park.

“I believe in sport and in the ­values of sport,” Rafael Nadal said this week. “It’s an example for ­society and for kids. If I was doing something against that, I’d be lying to myself and not just my ­opponent.

“I love the sport as a competitor and as a follower so when something negative happens in the world of sport, I am sad.”

Every drug scandal forces Nadal to address career-long ­rumours and accusations about himself. He’s the collateral ­damage. Whatever Nadal was on at Meldonium Park this year, it wasn’t performance-enhancing. He bombed out to Fernando Verdasco in the first round. Perhaps he was on nothing but his last legs.

He was shattered at Indian Wells. What to think? Was ­Sharapova hopelessly (or will­ingly) naive. Is she just another Russian drug cheat? It’s become something of a moot point. The damage has been done. Tennis is on edge.