http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/mar/11/maria-sharapova-aura-blemish-doubts-tennis
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At Wimbledon in 2004 the teenager gave another striking response to a question posed after her semi-final. She had spent the night before the match working on a sociology essay, she said, prompting someone to ask if it took her mind off the task ahead. “No,” she said without hesitation, “that’s not how it works. When I do one thing, I concentrate on that thing. When I do the other thing, I concentrate on that.”

The ability to compartmentalise her obligations must have been of enormous benefit as she navigated her way through her career on and off the court. She was always punctual, always businesslike, always focused on the task at hand, whether it be trying to beat Serena Williams or promoting Swiss watches. Which makes it all the more surprising that she should have failed to open any of the five official emails informing her that the heart medicine called meldonium – or mildronate, as she knew it – had been placed on the athletes’ banned list.

The appeal that made Sharapova the best-paid woman in world sport for 11 years in a row has always been based on paradoxes – starting with the contrast between that imperious, sometimes disdainful demeanour and a glorious smile that seems to come as naturally at unguarded moments as it does during a fashion shoot. To love her, you had to ignore her habit, before receiving serve, that quite blatantly forced her opponent to wait while she stood in the back court, facing in the opposite direction, reversing the normal protocol by making the point run to the receiver’s rhythm. Or the way she responded to moments of difficulty in a match by raising the volume on the prolonged scream emitted after each of her raking ground strokes, a tactic surely aimed – whatever she might have claimed – at disrupting her opponent’s concentration.

There was also the invention of the Sugarpova. Surely it must say something about a woman clearly proud of her own carefully maintained body that she would exploit her fame to sell sweets to children in a world struggling to control obesity among a generation hooked on sugar.

Her own drug was unknown to most of us until this week. She took meldonium for 10 years, allegedly on prescription from her family doctor to treat a variety of ailments. But if there is one thing we know about athletes it is that even the non-cheats among them will explore any potential marginal gain in the effort to acquire an edge.