{"id":32442,"date":"2016-03-10T09:01:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T17:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/sharapova-guilty-of-willful-negligence\/"},"modified":"2016-03-10T09:01:28","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T17:01:28","slug":"sharapova-guilty-of-willful-negligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/sharapova-guilty-of-willful-negligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharapova guilty of ‘willful negligence’"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014<\/strong> Maria Sharapova was guilty of \u201cwillful negligence\u201d for using meldonium, and international tennis officials were aware that many players were taking the drug before it was banned this year, former World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Pound told The Associated Press that Sharapova could face a ban of up to four years unless she can prove mitigating circumstances to explain her positive test for meldonium at the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n

Meldonium, a Latvian-manufactured drug designed to treat heart conditions, was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency\u2019s banned list on Jan. 1 after authorities noticed widespread use of the substance among athletes.<\/p>\n

In announcing her positive test at a news conference in Los Angeles on Monday, Sharapova said she had been using the drug for 10 years for various medical issues. The five-time Grand Slam champion and world\u2019s highest-earning female athlete said she hadn\u2019t realized meldonium had been prohibited this year, taking full responsibility for her mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn athlete at that level has to know that there will be tests, has to know that whatever she or he is taking is not on the list, and it was willful negligence to miss that,\u201d Pound said. \u201cShe was warned in advance I gather. The WADA publication is out there. She didn\u2019t pay any attention to it. The tennis association issued several warnings, none of which she apparently read.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am sorry, if you are running a $30 million a year sole enterprise you better make sure the basis for that commercial success, if nothing else, remains unassailable,\u201d Pound added in the interview with the AP on the sidelines of the Tackling Doping in Sport conference at Twickenham Stadium.<\/p>\n

Current WADA president Craig Reedie questioned why Sharapova was prescribed meldonium.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the reports are true and this was happening when she was a teenager, then you begin to wonder why a drug that is basically to help heart problems was administered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pound disclosed that international tennis officials had flagged up the use of meldonium to the WADA committee that monitors the use of various drugs and recommends whether to put them on the banned list.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, within the tennis circle at least, they were aware that a lot of the players were using it (meldonium) and said that there must be something to this, so they referred it to the WADA list committee,\u201d Pound said.<\/p>\n

So far, Sharapova is the only tennis player with a known positive test for meldonium.<\/p>\n

Meldonium, which is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was banned by WADA because it aids oxygen uptake and endurance. Several other athletes in various international sports have already been caught using it since it was banned Jan. 1.<\/p>\n

A study published Wednesday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that up to 490 athletes may have been taking meldonium during last year\u2019s inaugural European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan. The drug was not banned at that time.<\/p>\n

The study found that 13 winners or medalists were taking meldonium, 66 athletes tested positive for it, and the drug was detected in athletes in 15 of the 21 sports on the program. The research contributed to WADA\u2019s decision to add meldonium to the banned list.<\/p>\n

Sharapova is being provisionally suspended by the International Tennis Federation, which will hold hearings on the case and decide on any long-term ban.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe faces up to four years sanction for this,\u201d Pound said. \u201cThere will have to be a review of whatever mitigating factors there may be, and not many leap to mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pound said he did not understand why Sharapova would have been taking the drug for so long.<\/p>\n

The player said Monday that she had taken meldonium for a decade following various health problems including regular sicknesses, early signs of diabetes and \u201cirregular\u201d results from echocardiography exams.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at it from 10,000 feet and from outside, you say, \u2018I am sorry but that doesn\u2019t hold together,\u2019\u201d Pound said. \u201cYou\u2019re in the United States, this is a product that is not available in the United States, and so there has got to be more to this than meets the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grindeks, the Latvian company that manufactures meldonium, said the normal course of treatment with meldonium is four to six weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the issues that will have to be dealt with is that the use of this product for therapeutic purposes is not a long term,\u201d Pound said. \u201cYou use it for a single intervention for weeks or months maybe, but not for 10 years in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharapova\u2019s lawyer, John J. Haggerty, said Tuesday that he wanted \u201cto disabuse the concept that Maria took mildronate every day for 10 years because that\u2019s simply not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 Maria Sharapova was guilty of \u201cwillful negligence\u201d for using meldonium, and international tennis officials were aware that many players were taking the drug before it was banned this year, former World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound said Wednesday. Pound told The Associated Press that Sharapova could face a ban of up to four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32442"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}