Maria Sharapova's explanation for taking a banned drug may have just cost her a get-out-of-jail-free card
Sharapova's positive test was one of 172 since meldonium was added to the banned substance list by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on January 1, according to the BBC.
On Monday, the WADA made an announcement that suggests some of these athletes may be able to avoid suspensions. It turns out there are questions over how long the substance will remain in the body and some athletes claim they stopped taking the drug in January and still failed the test.
"There is currently a lack of clear scientific information on excretion times," WADA said in new guidance distributed on Monday (via the BBC). "
According to WADA, if the athletes can show that they "could not have known or suspected" the drug would still be in their system, "WADA considers that there may be grounds for no fault or negligence on the part of the athlete."
While this could be a huge get-out-of-jail-free card for many of the athletes, Sharapova has a big problem. She has seemingly already admitted to taking meldonium since it became a banned substance, and won't have access to the loophole.
"I did fail the test and I take full responsibility for it," Sharapova said during her press conference in March. "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, the rules had changed and meldonium had become a prohibited substance, which I had not known."
In other words, Sharapova is not arguing that the substance was just still in her body from usage before January 1 as other athletes have argued. Rather, she is arguing ignorance of the rules, that she did not read the emails with the updated list of banned substances.
She later added, "I made a huge mistake."
The ITF has yet to rule on Sharapova's status, but it will be interesting to see what type of backlash they face if many athletes are given a pass and Sharapova is not.
You can see Sharapova's statement here: