Maria Sharapova a former Tennis star who was caught doing drugs and got stripped off some of her sponsorships.
Maria Sharapova is a Russian former world No. 1 tennis player. She competed on the WTA Tour from 2001 to 2020 and was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for 21 weeks.
She is one of ten women, and the only Russian, to achieve the career Grand Slam. She is also an Olympic medalist, having won silver in women’s singles at the 2012 London Olympics.
Sharapova became the world No. 1 for the first time on 22 August 2005 at the age of 18, becoming the first Russian woman to top the singles rankings, and last held the position for a fifth time for four weeks from 11 June 2012 to 8 July 2012.
Sharapova won five major titles — two at the French Open and one each at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. She won 36 titles in total, including the year-end championships in her debut in 2004.
She also won three doubles titles. Although she played under the banner of Russia with the WTA, she has lived in and been a United States permanent resident since 1994.
From 2003, Sharapova played a full season and made a rapid climb into the top 50 by the end of the year. She made her debuts at both the Australian Open and the French Open, but failed to win a match in either. Then, as a wildcard at Wimbledon, she defeated 11th seed Jelena Dokić, her first win over a top-20 player, to reach the fourth round, where she lost in three sets to Svetlana Kuznetsova.
In the 2004 Sharapova was defeated in the third round of the Australian Open by sixth seed Anastasia Myskina. She later reached the semifinals at the Cellular South Cup, where she lost to eventual champion Vera Zvonareva.
On 7 March 2016, Sharapova revealed that she had failed a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open, which she described as the result of an oversight. Sharapova admitted to testing positive for meldonium, an anti-ischemic drug usually prescribed for heart conditions that was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s banned substances list on 1 January 2016.
Sharapova was provisionally suspended by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) from playing tennis effective from March 12, 2016.
She later released a statement regarding the test and explaining her use of the medicine,
In her statement she said: “I received a letter from the ITF that I failed a drugs test at the Australian Open. I take full responsibility for it. For the past ten years I have been given a medicine called mildronate by my family doctor and a few days ago after I received the ITF letter I found out that it also has another name of meldonium which I did not know. It is very important for you to understand that for ten years this medicine was not on WADA’s banned list and I had legally been taking the medicine for the past ten years. But on January 1st [2016] the rules had changed and meldonium became a prohibited substance which I had not known. I was given this medicine by my doctor for several health issues that I was having in 2006.”
As a result of the failed drug test, Nike and TAG Heuer suspended their relationships with Sharapova, while Porsche postponed promotional work.
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