On 11 February I wrote a piece titled Communism Does Funny Things to Tennis, pointing out that 10 out of the 16 top players accused of match fixing came from either Russia or Eastern Europe.
The reason for this is fairly obvious: communism corrupts – surely and enduringly. A country may call itself something else now or it may actually (and counterintuitively) become something else. But her whole system has been poisoned by the toxin of the most cannibalistic politics in history, and – even if all the good intentions are there and all the right moves are made – it’ll take generations to produce effective antibodies.
This explains why Russia is home to 70 per cent of the murders committed in Europe. Going down the scale of criminality and corruption, it also explains why most doping scandals in sport involve Russians or Eastern Europeans.
So, when Maria Sharapova called a press conference yesterday to announce that she had failed a drug test, only those who ignore the geopolitical factor in corruption were surprised.
To be sure, the desire to get ahead in life isn’t limited to former denizens of the Warsaw Pact countries, and neither is the propensity to cut the odd corner in pursuit of the good life. But the maniacal, almost universal amorality of such a pursuit is surely more endemic in Russia than in, say, Finland.
Solzhenitsyn writes about the concentration-camp mentality pervading every pore of Russian society: you die today, I’ll die tomorrow. When survival is in peril, people toughen up in direct proportion to their moral standards loosening up.
Extreme circumstances do produce more heroes than one would expect from the conditions of comfort and security. But they produce infinitely more amoral scrappers, ready to use tooth and claw to fight their way to the top.
Maria Sharapova left Russia when she was 15, technically after the ‘collapse’ of communism. But ‘technically’ is the operative word. The moral decrepitude of the Soviet Union seeped into Sharapova’s genetic makeup, turning her into a fanatical pursuer of success, defined – as it almost invariably is in that supposed paragon of selfless spirituality – in crassly material terms.
Since then she has parlayed her tennis talent, commercial acumen and good looks (personally, I’m turned off by her harsh, thin-lipped, cruel face, but my taste is neither here nor there) into a £130-million fortune, of which only £25 million has come from tournament prizes. The rest came from endorsements and flogging her personal brand of sweets.
You might think that the urge to get ahead would abate when one is already so far ahead of the game, but avarice isn’t like hunger for food: it’s never satisfied. Hence, since Sharapova’s success off court is partly contingent on her performance on it, and since modern tennis places a particularly high premium on endurance, she was taking meldonium, a stamina-enhancing drug.
When she was caught red-handed, Sharapova used the trick recommended by Putin and common to all Russian street brawlers: strike first. She called a press conference and offered a few pathetic excuses.
She didn’t know meldonium was declared illegal in January. She had been taking it for 10 years as a prophylactic therapy for angina and diabetes.
Such conditions must be pandemic among professional athletes, for 182 of them (mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe) have been caught taking meldonium since it was banned. Those poor souls must have been unaware of the drug’s endurance-boosting properties.
As to her supposedly being unaware of the ban, two points are worth mentioning. First, ever since Roman law was thought of, one of the guiding legal principles has been ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse).
Second, Sharapova isn’t just a basher of yellow balls. She’s the leader of a vast team of coaches, trainers, masseurs, doctors, racket stringers, marketing consultants, investment consultants – and lawyers.
It’s inconceivable that no one in that team would have caught the news of the ban. And even should that have happened, surely the grapevine of the tennis circuit was abuzz with the latest development in anti-doping laws.
However, the same mentality that tells amoral thugs like Putin or Sharapova to land the first blow also teaches them that no such thing as truth exists. They’ll say anything they find expedient at the moment, even if it’s the most transparent of lies.
Sharapova will probably get a ban, a year at least, possibly longer. Some commentators mention a lifelong ban, which is just as well for her health. Playing professional tennis must be hard on the poor thing suffering from cardiac problems.
No one dares suggest a multi-million fine, depriving Sharapova of some of her ill-gotten gains. More important, no one dares ascribe her malfeasance to her origin and early upbringing.
This is a shame because such benevolence will prevent the public from learning a valuable lesson that goes well beyond tennis, pharmacology or unscrupulous athletes. It’s the lesson in the terrible moral blight afflicting half of Europe.