Andre was no dope on the court
One slip-up with crystal meth should not wreck Agassi's legacy of hard graft, says Alison O'Riordan
Sunday November 08 2009
WHEN I was a young girl, I was addicted to tennis, and Andre Agassi, the most distinctive player on the men's tour in the Nineties, was my icon, my pin-up boy of the game, my ultimate fantasy.
Images of his bleach-blonde, long, peroxide, wavy hair, held back with his US flag bandanna, his big dark imploring eyes and wild-child reputation, outlandish persona and fluorescent outfits plastered the walls of my bedroom.
He encompassed everything I admired most in a tennis superstar. Sports stars are heroes and the Las Vegas legend was mine.
I celebrated with the charismatic player, at the tender age of 11 in 1992, by punching my fist in the air many times from the comfort of my television room when he won his first Grand Slam at Wimbledon by defeating Goran Ivanisevic in five sets. And I would commiserate with him when he lost, my eyes would well up and my voice waver but never as much as when he closed out his 21-year career to thunderous applause with a four-set loss to German qualifier Benjamin Becker at the US Open tournament in New York in 2006. After years of dealing with injuries, after months of contemplation, he finally spoke the words he knew he had to -- at the place he knew he had to.
Am I disappointed at Agassi's admission in his recent published autobiography that he took crystal meth in 1997? No, I am surprised. And am I disappointed that after failing a drugs test, he avoided a ban by saying he had accidentally ingested the stimulant by sipping from his assistant's "spiked soda"? No, because I would have done exactly the same.
His book is called Open, after all, and whilst I don't believe it will damage his own reputation directly, I do feel his lie is all the more destructive for the sport's image and the sport's authorities.
When Agassi got the call saying he failed a drug test, one must remember he wasn't even in the Top 100 in the world. Yet his name, his career, everything he had worked so hard for was on the line, not to mention the fact that the millions of dollars he had made out of tennis could all have been taken away from him as fast as his return serve down the line. All that work since the age of seven when his father used to shoot balls at him from a machine called the Dragon would have been a waste -- so he lied and escaped a suspension. He was to go on to become an eight-time grand slam champion and this would never have been accomplished had he told the truth.
He was having doubts about his impending marriage to actress Brooke Shields and his form on the court was falling, so he slipped up by taking a forbidden substance.
We all deal with our emotions in different ways, and one slip-up should not wreck a lifetime of hard graft. Agassi is still every bit the role model for me and probably even more so as it shows he has human weaknesses.
A funny part of the book is when he comes clean about his rocky marriage to Shields and the run-up to their big day when the actress was going through a rigourous training regime, and "for motivation she tapes a photo on the refrigerator door. It's a photo of the perfect woman, she says. The perfect woman with the perfect legs -- the legs Brooke wants. The photo is of Steffi Graf." Graf is now Agassi's second wife.
This aside, the fact is tennis has always had its drugs issues. Vitas Gerulaitis was a cocaine user and Martina Hingis was in the second year of her comeback when she tested positive for cocaine during Wimbledon in 2007.
Jennifer Capriati also went off the rails and was arrested for marijuana possession but gradually went on to rebuild her career. Greg Rusedski tested positive for nandrolone in 2003 but was cleared successfully. The most recent high-profile doping case in tennis was that of Richard Gasquet, who tested positive for cocaine at this year's Miami Masters in March, but he was cleared to return to the tour in July after an independent tribunal accepted his story that he had ingested the narcotic after kissing a girl in a nightclub.
- Alison O'Riordan
Sunday Independent
