2‘The idea
of settling
down
sounds
nice, but
not in the
near future’
—MARIA
SHARAPOVAstrong people who have had an easy past,” she says.
In an excerpt from her new memoirUnstoppable,
Sharapova looks back on her rise and the routine
drug test that threatened to tarnish it all. “I peed in a
cup,” she says, “as I’ve done for years.” Weeks later she
received the e-mail that would change her life.As I read it, I started to panic. That urine test?
I failed it.
Mildronate is a supplement I’d been taking for
ten years. It had been recommended to me by a
family doctor when I’d been run down and had
several abnormal EKGs. I took the pill before
intense physical exertion, as you might take baby
aspirin to ward off a heart attack. In Russia, mil-
lions take it every day, including my grandmother!
How does it enhance performance? It doesn’t. It
seems the officials banned it merely because it was
being used by so many Eastern Europeans. “They
must be taking it for a reason”—something like that.
I’d missed news of the ban. That was my big mistake.
And now that moment of carelessness threat-
ened to ruin everything. I could be banned for
as long as four years! What followed were days
of disbelief and despair. “Goddamnit,” I finally
screamed. “I’m going to fight this bullshit.” To
understand my determination, you need to know
who I am, where I come from, what happened.
I was four. My father, Yuri, who had taken up
tennis, brought me along to the courts in Sochi.
Bored, I pulled a racket out of his bag and started
to hit. Off a fence, a wall. I fell into a trance, the ball
leaving and returning to my racket like a yo-yo. In
this way, my life began.
After she started attracting attention locally, her
dad signed her up for a kids’ tennis clinic.
It was not my skill people remarked on. It was
that I could hit that ball again and again. That was
my gift. Stamina. Even then, I knew these tasks,
this tedium, would help me win. Even then, I
wanted to beat them all.
In ’93 a coach told her dad they should leave
Russia to further her career. Father and daughter
finagled visas and went to Florida, where Maria
was accepted on scholarship at Nick Bollettieri’s
renowned tennis academy.
I felt like a freak amid all those American girls.
Unless you’re on scholarship there, you come
from money. And here I was, with an oversized
chopped-down racket and shoes from a factory
in Minsk. I looked weird. And they laughed.
She and her dad rented the living room in a run-
down apartment; he took odd jobs to support them.
My father and I shared a fold-out double bed that
sagged. Was it strange to share a bed with my fa-
ther, to be sleeping side by side like an old married143
Maria’s World
1.“He was a tough
father and coach,”
Sharapova says of
dad Yuri (in 1994).
“But we shared
the same goal.”
2.Sharapova (with
Serena Williams and
Victoria Azarenka)
won silver in
women’s singles at
the 2012 Olympics.
3.Celebrating her
victory at the 2014
French Open.
4.“We definitely
have stayed close,”
Sharapova says of
her ex Grigor
Dimitrov (in 2012).
“We really respect
each other.”FROM TOP: MARIA SHARAPOVA/FSG BOOKS; EMPICS/GETTY IMAGES; MARIA SHARAPOVA/FSG BOOKS; MATTHEW STOCKMAN/GETTY IMAGES