The fall of Maria Sharapova

I always brought Maria Sharapova as an example to handle the compettive stress with her routine at the end of each point. “Learn from her,” I said to the girls and boys playing tennis, probably only Jonny Wilkinson, rugby, has a routine so well defined and effective way to stay cool under pressure. Young people had to take a cue from her, not by passively imitate a way of being but to understand that we must have an effective system to manage the anxiety, she was a model. Well now all this has disappeared, because this job to improve her ability to manage the stress was done by meldonium. And then I hear the talk of these days: “If you want to stay in the first hundreds you need an help”, “Look at so and so, they sometimes stop because someone have warned them that otherwise would have been accused of doping”. Writes Maurizio Crosetti on La Repubblica: “The superstar rigged almost always falls with a crash, like a redwood, but in that trunk failure was ancient and invisible, something very internal and dark.” Sports betrayed in its emotions, in being the realization of dreams, in that aesthetic beauty combined with the competitiveness that leads to deal with others, to fulfill the motto “every time the best wins.” Well, today we have discovered another top athlete who belongs instead to the category “mess”, Maria Sharapova as all the others who were caught in dope. We must accept that Sharapova is part of this category as many others who were inspired us loving their performances, were fake. We must however continue to be convinced that it is possible to reach the absolute level results even without the use of doping or drug abuse. Let us remember that the limits are often only mental. Before Reinhold Messner no one had ever gone on eight-thousand without oxygen because it was thought impossible. Before Roger Bannister everyone thought that it wa impossible to run the mile under 4 minutes, 60 years ago he did it. Sport is an experience in which the aim is to challenge the impossible, to overcome the supposed physical and mental barriers and realize perfromamces thought impossible. Prepare us for this, this sport is not for everyone, it is for anyone who wants to realize his/her dreams. We have to build a sports culture on these bases and train young people daily on these concepts. We seek “divergents people” as the saga of Veronica Roth, because they are the solution and defy the evil knowing they can do it. And this does not seem rhetorical, because it comes for all the day, when someone will propose not to play the fool and it’s time to do what they do all those who want to win and have money and contracts, otherwise you will remain a nobody. Beware, though, these characters are everywhere and can be your doctor or the parents themselves.