Australian tennis racket company Head announced Thursday that it would continue to sponsor Maria Sharapova, despite her admission on March 7 that she had failed a drug test and would temporarily halt her competition.
Head is the first of Sharapova’s major sponsors to continue to back her in light of her announcement.
The company’s CEO Johan Eliasch told the Associated Press that he believed she had not intended to use the drug meldonium after it had been banned in January.
He called her mistake a “manifest error,” and contended that there was no “evidence of any intent by Maria of enhancing her performance or trying to gain an unfair advantage.