Tennis player Greg Rusedski has tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone. Reading these reports brought back some pretty ill feelings I have towards this athlete. There are few I dislike as much as I dislike Rusedski.
Rusedski was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec. He's as Canadian as I, and played professional tennis as a supposedly proud Canadian. In 1995 he applied to change the country he played for to Britain and based this on the fact his mother had lived in England until the age of four. He simply decided he didn't want to play for the country in which he lived and trained his entire life and opted to be regarded as British instead. His motives, no doubt, were monetary. Seeing him ham it up at Wimbledon sporting a Union Jack bandana was rather hard to digest. It was a cheesy move and I've detested him ever since.
What made the switch an even more bitter pill to swallow is the fact Canada has had such a difficult time producing a quality male tennis player. Rusedski was showing such promise in 1995 and there was a sense that we'd finally have a homegrown rooting interest on the ATP. Instead, he became a phony Brit and an ungrateful Canadian. Seeing his name attached to this controversy pleases me. Seeing he's now ranked 119th in the world pleases me even more.
