It is bad enough that Serena Williams shows rank hypocrisy on the matter of equal pay in tennis. She also diminishes her status as a great athlete by her refusal to condemn a proven drugs cheat, that is to say Maria Sharapova.
Sharapova faces a ban for tennis after she was caught using a substance which from January of this year was banned. Sharapova has been using it for ten years and claimed that it was only administered on medical advice. Sadly this prescription drug is meant to be taken for a maximum of six weeks and is only available in the Baltic States and Russia while the drug cheat lives in the US. This drug has the effect of enhancing endurance among top atheletes and stacks of Russian athletes appear to have been using it.
This is the way of drug cheats. Athletes take a legal substance to boost perfirmance. The authorities note that this gives them an unfair advantage and so ban that substance. Atheletes the find a new legal substance to use. And so the game goes on. It is not cheating unless you use a substance after it is banned but it is "not quite cricket" and anyone doing it is someone who should be shamed and shunned.
Sadly Maria was careless enough to carry on using the substance she used to give her that extra edge after it was banned and so she is officially a cheat. She got caught and then tried to spin an apology saying it was all about treating a medical condition.
That is patently not the case. Had she had a condition she would surely have secured a US pharmaceutical to treat it and if she mistrusted US doctors and had to use a quack from the FSU she would surely have followed guidelines about length of use? Maria's explanation does not wash.
Yet Serena said that she applauded her rival's honesty and open approach and hoped that she would be dealt with leniantly. Hell's teeth, Maria only fessed up because she got caught and she then proceeded to spin a story that is utterly impluasible in an attempt not to lose lucrative sponsorship. That attempt has largely failed.
It is the attitude of Williams that is most perplexing. Why express solidarity with someone who has tarnished the reputation of your sport? The events of the past few years across a range of sports make me almost assume that everyone is trying to play the drug testers to gain some sort of advantage and that is one reason why I care less and less about all professional sport. It appears to be a rigged game where money has corrupted everything.
The failure of big name athletes to condemn those who do get caught cheating only adds to my mistrust and growing ennui with the whole business.