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Maria Sharapova says she is "determined to fight back" after testing positive for meldonium, reports the BBC.
In a Facebook post railing against "distorted and exaggerated"
reporting, she denied taking meldonium every day and missing five
warnings that the drug was about to be banned.
She also criticized the tennis authorities for making the relevant information "too hard to find".
Russian Sharapova, 28, will be provisionally suspended from 12 March.
The five-time Grand Slam-winner, who faces a ban of up to four years,
says she has been taking the drug, which was added to the World
Anti-Doping Agency's banned list on 1 January, for health reasons for
the past 10 years.
However, she insisted she had only taken the heart drug "in the low doses recommended".
Taking issue with reports that a normal course of meldonium treatment
lasts only four to six weeks, she added: "The story quotes the
manufacturer of my medicine as saying: 'Treatment course can be repeated
twice or thrice a year. Only physicians can follow and evaluate
patient's health condition and state whether the patient should use
meldonium for a longer period of time.'
"That's exactly what I did. I didn't take the medicine every day."
While Sharapova reiterated that she had "no excuses" for failing to be
aware of the change in regulations, she criticized the way in which the
information was communicated to players.
"The communications? They were buried in newsletters, websites, or handouts," she wrote.
"In order to be aware of this 'warning', you had to open an email with a
subject line having nothing to do with anti-doping, click on a webpage,
enter a password, enter a username, hunt, click, hunt, click, hunt,
click, scroll and read.
"I guess some in the media can call that a warning. I think most people would call it too hard to find."
28-year-old Sharapova concluded: "I have been honest and upfront. I
look forward to the ITF hearing at which time they will receive my
detailed medical records."