Maria Sharapova is set to make a comeback at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix on April 26th, after a 15-month doping suspension. The five-time grand slam winner has won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix five times, and had been sponsored by the Germany luxury car maker, until Porsche put their relationship on hold when she was first banned.

              After Sharapova was tested positive for cardiac drug meldonium last January, she received a two-year ban. In September, the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) shortened her two-year ban to 15 months.

              Before her ban, Sharapova had been the best-paid female athlete in the last 11 years,  according to Forbes. Sharapova has said she had been using the drug, meldonium, since 2006 for other health issues, and wasn’t aware that it was prohibited by the World Anti- Doping Agency from 2016.

           From the shadow of Chernobyl's nuclear wasteland to international super-stardom; from penniless arrival in the United States, without a word of English, to a fortune nudging the USD 200 million mark. It may sound like the stuff of Hollywood dreams, but the story of Maria Sharapova, the world's richest sportswoman, is a testament to the power of one individual to make it, whatever be the odds. 

      Sharapova first picked up a racquet at the age of four when she was living in Sochi, where her Belarus-born parents had settled after escaping the deadly clutches of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Maria Sharapova : All set to comeback..!!

        By the latter stages of 2005 and before she was out of her teens,  Sharapova had astonishingly become the first Russian woman to attain the world number one position. She  carried  off  the US open in 2006, the Australian open two years later and career Grand Slam with her first of two French Opens in 2012. 

          Before she was rumbled for doing Meldonium in January, she was still listed as the world’s richest sportswoman with staggering earnings of 21 million euros snagged off the court over the past year. This was despite lifting the last of her five Grand Slam titles two years ago at the French Open.

          But soon after the case, her fellow co-players began coming out of the woodwork to remind the world how unpleasant, rude and ruthless Sharapova was in the dressing room. One wrote about how everybody already knew that Sharapova was a cheat, and how she perhaps deserved this fate. If so why didn’t these drugs help her win over Serena?

          Sharapova herself admitted that she used Meldonium. But she was unaware that the drug was actually been banned by the association. After the ban, the same people who praised her at her good times have begun calling her a cheater.

          But she stopped at nothing. And now everything has stopped for her. Sharapova is coming back to tennis. This comeback is actually to prove those backbiters how much she loves tennis and how much tennis needs Sharapova. Remember the quote “And now she is born from the ashes, she is a warrior in bloodied black”.            -Sarika