The way this looks and walks and quacks, it is beginning to appear very much like a duck.

Maria Sharapova says she started to take meldonium 10 years ago on the advice of her family doctor to treat of a range of medical complaints, including a heart irregularity, a magnesium deficiency and a family history of diabetes. Maybe that's fair enough. One of the lesser indications for Mildronate, as she knew the drug, is for "decreased performance, physical stress, including in athletes".

But she continued to use it for a decade, knowing it was not approved for sale in the US and had to be sourced from its maker in Latvia, which, at the very least, must have made her wonder if she was onto something that no one else was. She said it made her "healthy". Evidently, her decrease in performance eased; she won four more major championships to add to her maiden triumph at Wimbledon in 2004.