Maria Sharapova’s lawyer has demanded an apology be made to the banned tennis player by the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), Craig Reedie, after he made comments about the Russian’s salary in relation to her two-year doping suspension.
Sharapova will be ineligible to play competitive tennis again until May, 2018 after she admitted to taking the banned substance meldonium, following a positive drug test at January’s Australian Open.
With Russia also facing a ban from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the spotlight if firmly on Russia’s anti-doping programme, but Sharapova’s lawyer insists that the 29-year-old is owed an apology from Reedie.
Speaking at a Wada conference in London, Reedie was calling for more funding to be made available for the organisation in order to combat doping issues in sport when he reference Sharapova salary – unrivalled by any other female athlete globally – and claimed that the Russian earns more annually that what Wada are able to spend.
“I suspect that we probably punch pretty well above our weight when it comes to the amount of work that is achieved and the successes that are achieved on a budget of less than $30m a year,” said Reedie.
“For me the only satisfactory element in Madame Sharapova’s case was that in one year she can earn more money than the whole of Wada’s budget put together.”
