Stronger After Scandal

In a New Memoir the tennis star chronicles her rise to fame, her devastating 2016 suspension—and how she’s coming back fighting.

- Patrick Gomez

A five-time Grand Slamwinner and 2012 Olym-pic silver medalist,Maria Sharapova waspoised for success at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio when her dreams of gold disappeared. In early 2016 she tested positive for meldonium (also called Mildronate), a supplement she’d taken for years that had just been added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned substances list, and the tennis pro was suspended from her sport for 15 months. “It’s probably the toughest thing an athlete can go through,” says Sharapova, 30. But now she’s back: On July 31 she won her first U.S. tournament in almost two years. Her comeback hasn’t been completely smooth. There are still some who think she used meldonium to enhance her performance (see box), and she was sidelined by an arm injury after her recent win. But the Russian-born athlete is used to rising above adversity. “I don’t know a lot of strong people who have had an easy past,” she says. In an excerpt from her new memoir Unstoppable, Sharapova looks back on her rise and the routine drug test that threatened to tarnish it all. “I peed in a cup,” she says, “as I’ve done for years.” Weeks later she received the e-mail that would change her life.

As I read it, I started to panic. That urine test? I failed it.

Mildronate is a supplement I’d been taking for ten years. It had been recommended to me by a family doctor when I’d been run down and had several abnormal EKGs. I took the pill before intense physical exertion, as you might take baby aspirin to ward off a heart attack. In Russia, millions take it every day, including my grandmother!