MARIA SHARAPOVA’S spectacular fall from grace is just the tip of the iceberg, for tennis and for sport.
Because the anti-doping panel’s report on the former Wimbledon champion and her failed drugs test at the Australian Open makes it clear she is far from alone in using prescription medicines to enhance performance.
Ben Johnson pumping himself full of steroids to win Olympic 100m gold and Lance Armstrong pimping his ride with EPO to claim seven Tour de France titles are one side of the drugs-in sport-debate.
But another is the thousands of sports stars and wannabes abusing legal substances to gain an advantage that is certainly immoral, and perhaps damaging to their health.
It was already known that eight per cent of athletes at the Winter Olympics in Baku in 2015, including 13 medallists, had been taking meldonium, which at that time was not a banned substance.
But the Sharapova verdict revealed that tennis players gave 24 positive tests for meldonium during 2015, when its use was being monitored because of fears it was being used to boost performance.
Five of those positives were from Sharapova. But who were the other tennis players, who were presumably not stupid enough to keep taking it after January 1?
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And what are they and athletes in other sports taking now?
Sharapova, of course, claimed that she had been taking meldonium – known to her as Mildronate - since 2006 to treat a number of medical conditions, as part of a cocktail of 18 and later 30 substances prescribed by a doctor in Russia.
She told the panel that in 2012 she decided she no longer wanted to rattle around like a pill bottle and stopped working with the medic.
But what she couldn’t explain was why she kept on taking Mildronate and two other substances he had prescribed, without asking any other doctor for advice.
The panel said: “The manner of its use, on match days and when undertaking intensive training, is only consistent with an intention to boost her energy levels.
“It may be that she genuinely believed that Mildronate had some general beneficial effect on her health but the manner in which the medication was taken, its concealment from the anti-doping authorities, her failure to disclose it even to her own team, and the lack of any medical justification must inevitably lead to the conclusion that she took Mildronate for the purpose of enhancing her performance.”
The panel's report revealed she took it at Wimbledon, at the WTA women’s tour finals and at the Federation Cup Final, all in 2015, and before all five of her matches at this year’s Australian Open. And no doubt on countless other occasions.
It seems particularly telling that Sharapova failed, on each of the seven occasions she was drug tested between October 2014 and that fateful day in January, to declare on doping control forms that she was taking Mildronate.
Vitamins, supplements and other stuff she was taking: yes. A drug designed to treat patients with chronic heart problems: no. Ironically, if she had been honest about taking meldonium legally in 2015, she wouldn't have been busted in 2016.
It also says something about the rigorousness of tennis' drug-testing programme, that the highest paid female athlete in the world was tested only seven times in 15 months.
Sharapova is in no mood to give up and fellow tennis stars Marin Cilic and Viktor Troicki have both had bans for anti-doping rule violations cut by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in recent years.
Richard Gasquet was suspended for 12 months in 2009 after testing positive for cocaine, but CAS wiped out the ban completely after accepting his explanation he had ingested the drug by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
Sharapova will need to find a whole new level of charm offensive to get a similar result.
But her case is just the most high profile example yet of an issue that goes right to the, er, heart of sport.
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