Five time Grand Slam tennis champion Maria Sharapova has described her suspension at the end of the 2016 Australian Open for using a banned drug as the ‘worst kind of mindf**k.’
After the tennis star’s drug test revealed she had been using Meldonium, a drug used to treat coronary artery disease, the media firestorm that ensued drove her to worry about what people thought of her, she says in her new autobiography.
Sharapova had been taking the supplement for ten years for abnormal EKGs.
Facing a two-year ban from playing professional tennis, she told herself: ‘Goddamit, I’m going to fight this bulls**t’, she writes in her upcoming memoir, Unstoppable: My Life So Far, to be published by Sarah Crichton Books, September 12.
Sharapova, it turns out, is a great storyteller as well as a champion athlete. Her memoir is compelling and revealing as she describes her family escaping from the horrors of Chernobyl and how she consoled her game losses with ‘retail therapy’, shopping for luxury jewels at Bulgari and pricey handbags at Chloé.
But even that did not get her through her suspension nightmare.
During those tough days of waiting out the ban, Maria reveals she never forgot the secret she had on tennis champion Serena Williams, the one opponent she feared and found nearly impossible to beat.
In her new biography, Unstoppable: My Life So Far, Maria Sharapova opens up about her early days in Russia, defeating Serena Williams, and how her 15-month suspension took a toll on her in 2016
The Five time Grand Slam tennis champion was banned from playing professional tennis at the end of the Australian Open in 2015 after she tested positive for Meldonium, a drug used to treat coronary artery disease (Pictured on Day Three of the US Open)
But Maria eventually beat Serena in the finals of the 2004 Wimbledon at age 17 and carried that with her as motivation throughout her career.
The big secret Sharapova held was when she walked into the clubhouse after the 2004 match in the U.K. and overheard Serena crying – obviously over her loss of the match.
‘I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for it’ – witnessing this ‘low and vulnerable moment,’ she writes.
‘I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her, against all odds, at Wimbledon. I think she hated me for taking something that she believed belonged to her. I think she hated me for seeing her at her lowest moment. But mostly I think she hated me for hearing her cry. She’s never forgiven me for it’,’ she writes.
Serena’s grudge may be justified as she is considered by many to be the greatest tennis player of all time.
Sharapova’s all-consuming tennis life began at age four in 1991 when her father brought her along one day to local courts near their home in Sochi
‘First of all her physical presence is much stronger and bigger than you realize watching TV. She has thick arms and thick legs and is so intimidating and strong. It’s the whole thing – her presence, her confidence, her personality’.
That’s how it felt when Sharapova was 17 and she still feels that way now, she reveals.
‘Even now, she can make me feel like a little girl’, Maria writes, and says she deals with it with ‘a maddening composure and a stately calm’. But Serena is still in her head — the unconquerable foe.
At the heart of a lifetime of playing tennis is the desire to win.
‘I want to beat everyone. It’s not just the winning. It’s the not being beaten. Ribbons and trophies get old, but losing lasts. I hate it. Fear of defeat is what really drives many of us’, Maria confesses.
Sharapova’s all-consuming tennis life began at age four in 1991 when her father brought her along one day to local courts near their home in Sochi, a Russian city on the Black Sea.
The little girl pulled a racket out of her father’s tennis bag and started hitting balls off the fence, the wall.
‘I was small and young and did not know what I was doing but quickly fell into a trance, the ball leaving and returning to my racket like a yo-yo’.
This is where she writes her life began, growing up in Gomel, a city in Belarus, a country in Eastern Europe near the Russian border and near Chernobyl in Ukraine.
Her father, Yuri, led smokestack maintenance crews traveling all over the country.
But the gift of a tennis racket from his brother changed the lives of the Sharapova family forever – that and the eruption of the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl in April 1986.
They fled north to Siberia to escape the toxic fallout but Maria wonders if the dust didn’t affect her 6’2′ height because no one else in the family is that tall. And the mushrooms in the forest that feasted on the fallout became huge.
Maria moved to the US as a child with her father, and later she signed on with Nick Bollettieri’s IMG Academy (Maria and her family pictured with sports agent Mark McCormack)
Starting off young: Maria says she pulled a racket out of her father’s tennis bag and started hitting balls off the fence and the wall and immediately became hooked on the game
The 30-year-old Russian native says the gift of a tennis racket from her uncle changed the lives of the Sharapova family forever (Pictured with her coach Robert Lansdorp)
From Siberia, Yuri moved the family to Sochi, a resort known for its tennis. Maria was two years old and she would be on the tennis courts two years later exhibiting a unique skill in tracking the ball and swinging at it with an oversized racket with skill.
From a kid’s tennis clinic to private lessons with Yuri Yudkin, ‘a vodka-soaked maestro’, they all recognized the six-year-old had talent but to develop it, she had to get out of Russia. In Moscow, she was watched by tennis great, Martina Navratilova.
But she was told she still needed to get out of Russia and make her way to the States.
Her father quit his job and became coach of her coaches.
They were soon off to Miami with $700 in his pocket, her mother left behind to come when they were settled.
Unstoppable: My Life So Far will be released September 12
Her rise was sometimes desperately hard and sometimes serendipitous. Many strangers helped out by giving Yuri small jobs, places to stay, guidance, tennis courts for his daughter to practice on.
There were crazy bad days not knowing what the next meal would be or where they would sleep and then someone always appeared and helped the young girl along in her dream chase.
Maria, whose real name is Masha, changed tennis academies when learning slowed down, always moving towards the goal of being number one, the greatest tennis player in the world.
‘Tennis is not a game. It’s a sport and a puzzle, an endurance test you do whatever you can to win,’ she says. ‘It has been my enemy and my friend, my nightmare and the solace to that nightmare’.
And it was also a prison, she writes.
The tennis academies are laid out like prisons, with curfews, food lines, girls on one side, boys on the other, the daily routines.
When she signed on with Nick Bollettieri’s IMG Academy, she lived in a dorm and hated the environment with rich kids who were there mostly because their parents wanted them to follow their dream.
When she discovered the sport at a young age she says: ‘I was small and young and did not know what I was doing but quickly fell into a trance, the ball leaving and returning to my racket like a yo-yo’
She was also following a parental dream but it was hers as well, and she was there on a scholarship to show the others how to play the game.
By her ninth birthday, she was ranked among the best under 12 players in America and beating Bollettieri’s best players.
‘I tried to set myself apart. No emotion. No fear. Like ice. I was not friends with the other girls, because that would make me softer, easier to beat.
‘They could have been the nicest girls in the world, and I wouldn’t even have known it. I chose not to know it,’ Maria writes.
‘My biggest edge is that persona’.
And when she wanted to cry, she cried to her mother on the phone back in Russia.
It was at Bolletieri’s academy where she met her biggest competitor. Maria wanted to watch Serena and Venus Williams practice but didn’t want them to see her.
Her father devised a way she could watch them through a knothole in a wooden shed that had been set up to film players.
‘For all the power, for all the intensity of their practice, I had just one thought: I want to beat them’.
Maria worked her way up through other academies, getting better, gaining confidence, growing taller and finally turning pro and getting a manager, an agent.
By her ninth birthday, Maria (pictured with her best friend Estelle) was ranked among the best under 12 players in America and beating Bollettieri’s best players
Her career took a turn after she beat defending champion Serena Williams in Wimbledon in 2004 (Pictured the day after her victory with her host family’s kids)
That marked the end of her relationship with her father as her manager.
‘It made me lonely, but it also made me strong’.
And the money started coming in when she started playing in tournaments as an amateur. She won some, she lost some – but her game kept getting better and she turned pro in 2001. This meant better hotels and prize money.
‘People think it’s a glamorous life. And, in a way it is. It can also be confusing and lonely.
But Maria quickly learned that now that she was earning money, even if she lost, there was an upside.
You didn’t have to stay around and play any more tennis, and you don’t have to go to the press conference.
‘You don’t have to put off the healing balm of retail therapy’.
Maria attended the tennis academy in Bradenton, Florida where she met Serena and Venus Williams
‘When you feel you need to see a psychologist, go out and buy a pair of shoes instead. If they’re really great shoes, all your worries will evaporate.
‘Why pay $300 for some BS talk with a psychiatrist when you can pay the same and end up with a great pair of shoes that will be with you every day. It’s common sense!’ Maria quotes from her diary at the time.
One secret to winning she confesses is the game face. Scare your opponent with a steely eye. Look fierce like you’re going to crush them — and then hit the boulevards with that prize money for a madcap shopping spree.
Sharapova admits that despite beating Serena, she still finds Williams’s physical presence, confidence, and personality intimidating (Pictured shaking hands after Serena’s win in 2015 Wimbledon)
Maria says she thinks Serena has never forgiven her for hearing her cry after her defeat, and witnessing her in a ‘low and vulnerable moment,’ she writes (The two are pictured after 17-year-old Maria’s victory in 2004)
Sharapova confesses there were crazy days of being famous, agents calling making offers. She eventually became a great pitch-person selling products while life in that hermetically sealed bubble on the road kept rolling along.
However, a shoulder ache that turned out to be a torn tendon plunged her into a black hole that made it impossible for her to enjoy friends, family and even shopping.
It required surgery and that meant she would have to rebuild her entire game. She turned her obsessive nature on recovery and started keeping a journal.
Sharapova confesses she didn’t start dating seriously until the end of 2009 when she was 22 and got involved with Sasha Vujacic, a Slovenia basketball player signed with the LA Lakers.
He gave her a huge engagement ring but she viewed this act of pledging your love as an eastern Euro thing.
The 30-year-old admitted she consoled her game losses with ‘retail therapy’, shopping for luxury jewels at Bulgari and pricey handbags at Chloé (pictured at Chloé opening party in LA in 2009)
Serena heard Maria had gotten engaged and pulled her aside in the locker room at Wimbledon.
‘I heard you got engaged. Sorry for that, ha ha ha,’ she said, laughing at her own joke.
Serena then confessed she had a big diamond from a guy she had been dating for a long time, but she wasn’t going to marry him.
Maria’s engagement to Sasha fell apart when her own success, fame and wealth became a problem for the professional basketball player in 2012. She felt trapped and he signed with a Turkish team and made a quick exit from the U.S.
But later that year, she said tennis player Grigor Dimitrov stole her breath away whenever she saw him. She madly flirted with him and a love affair followed.
However, when she wasn’t winning matches, she saw herself spending too much time watching his games and realized she had to get back to working on her own career.
Maria and Grigor ended their relationship in July 2015.
The following year, the rhythm of Sharapova’s life unexpectedly changed when she got an email from the International Tennis Federation (ITF), notifying her she had failed the drug test for using meldonium, Mindronate, the brand name.
It was an over-the-counter supplement in Russia used for any heart issue and not considered a performance-enhancing drug.
Maria started taking it when she was 18 and advised to do so by a cardiologist as a precaution during high-intensity training and matches. The athlete noted that her grandmother took the medication as well.
The drug had been placed on a watch list by the World Anti-Doping Authority, responsible for setting ITF’s policies, and then it moved to the banned list in January 2016.
A catalog was sent out to players listing banned substances but Sharapova admits she never reviewed it and neither did anyone on her team.
The scandal resulted in two hearings and the two-year ban was reduced to 15 months in the second one.
‘It was like a worm in my brain, just the worst kind of mindf**k. I’d never felt that way before,’ she writes.
‘Suddenly, no matter who I looked at, I found myself thinking: Do they think I’m a cheater? Do they think I’m a liar?’
‘For the first time in my life, I was worried what people thought of me’.
Maria’s engagement to Sasha Vujacic (left) fell apart when her own success, fame and wealth became a problem for the professional basketball player in 2012. She later dated Grigor Dimitrov (right) until 2015
She returned to home in Manhattan Beach and her mother was so worried about her, she didn’t let her sleep alone for the next two weeks.
Sharapova returned to training but realized she needed to do something more to keep her busy.
She enrolled in a two-week summer program at Harvard Business School and began to feel better about herself.
Maria looks back at this forced hiatus as helping her.
She healed from all of her injuries and now believes she’s more ready to compete than she has been in years.
The 30-year-old tennis star will be competing at the U.S. Open, which kicked off this week.