Former world number one Maria Sharapova has revealed she failed a drugs test at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
The Russian, 28, tested positive for meldonium, a substance she has been taking since 2006 for health issues.<\/p>\n
Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam champion, said she was not yet aware of the sanctions she will face.<\/p>\n
“I did fail the test and take full responsibility for it,” said Sharapova, who won the Wimbledon title as a 17-year-old in 2004.<\/p>\n
“For the past 10 years I have been taking a medicine called mildronate by my doctor, my family doctor, and a few days ago after I received the letter from the ITF [International Tennis Federation] I found out it also has another name of meldonium, which I did not know.<\/p>\n
“It is very important for you to understand that for 10 years this medicine was not on Wada’s [World Anti-Doping Agency] banned list and I had been legally taking that medicine for the past 10 years.<\/p>\n
“But on 1 January the rules had changed and meldonium became a prohibited substance, which I had not known.”<\/p>\n
She added: “I received an email on 22 December from Wada about the changes happening to the banned list and you can see prohibited items, and I didn’t click on that link.”<\/p>\n Sharapova has been the highest-earning female athlete in the world for the past 11 years, according to the Forbes list.<\/p>\n She first reached world number one in August 2005 and is currently seventh in the rankings – but she has played just four tournaments since Wimbledon last July as she struggled with an arm injury.<\/p>\n Her most recent match was a defeat by Serena Williams at the Australian Open in January, but Sharapova, who turns 29 in April, hopes to be able to return to tennis in the future.<\/p>\n “I made a huge mistake,” she said.<\/p>\n “I have let my fans down, and let the sport down that I have been playing since the age of four that I love so deeply.<\/p>\n “I know that with this I face consequences and I don’t want to end my career this way. I really hope to be given another chance to play this game.”<\/p>\n There had been speculation Sharapova was going to announce her retirement and a large media contingent gathered for the Los Angeles news conference, which was streamed live online.<\/p>\n “I know many of you thought that I would be retiring today but if I was ever going to announce my retirement it would not be in a downtown Los Angeles hotel with this fairly ugly carpet,” she said.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former world number one Maria Sharapova has revealed she failed a drugs test at the Australian Open. The Russian, 28, tested positive for meldonium, a substance she has been taking since 2006 for health issues. Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam champion, said she was not yet aware of the sanctions she will face. “I did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}