ian wrote:jonovision_man wrote:15 months vs 18 months... I guess those 3 months are important though since a lot of tennis is played in them.
Also whether she was "transparent" or not depends on whether you believe her IMO ridiculous story that she wasn't taking the drug for performance enhancement. Clearly she was - although she may have intended to remain compliant and missed the deadline for it.
jono
15 vs. 24, i.e. a 9 month reduction. In particular, those 9 months include almost every important tournament in the year (French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, WTA championships).
Of course the drug was for performance enhancement. By definition, any prescribed medication is performance enhancing in some way and it's just a (usually hypothetical) question of whether the performance is enhanced beyond the level it would have reached without both the condition and the medication.
Sorry yeah 2 years, 24 months.
Most prescribed medication is to get you back to health, not to enhance your performance beyond what you'd normally/naturally be capable of - you're just playing semantic games. There really wasn't a legitimate therapeutic use for this that she'd have needed to get back to "normal", and it was widely abused by Russian athletes especially to enhance performance. She was trying to gain an edge by using prescription medication she didn't actually need and if she wasn't a tennis player she wouldn't have been taking - it's cheating in my books.
jono