Juiced tennis player returns: Sesil Karatantcheva flexes muscles after steroid suspension

The only juiced female tennis player in history returns to competition as her steroid suspension expired.  Bulgaria's Sesil Karatantcheva -- the tattooed and juiced phenom -- returned to action this season (AFP).

Never been one to mince words when it comes to her tennis ambitions, Sesil Karatantcheva is letting her racquet do the talking as she.seeks to revive her career following a record two-year drugs ban.

Karatantcheva, the only women's tennis player suspended for steroids, took a step in that direction in Morocco on Monday by winning her first WTA match since November 2005.

"Basically this is what I'm trying to do: Just kind of clean my name, and make people like me again," the 18-year-old Bulgarian told the Palm Beach Post earlier this month.

Karatantcheva, the only women's tennis player suspended for steroids, took a step in that direction in Morocco on Monday by winning her first WTA match since November 2005.

The player did more than juice: she's lived a quite full life, even though she is young:

"Now I feel a lot more mature," Karatantcheva told the newspaper. "And I feel more ready to face whatever comes with tennis. I had a tough puberty -- tattoos, earrings, I had it all. It is something you need to go through so you can move on."

Her return -- clean we hope -- appears to be successful:

Since being reinstated at the beginning of the year, Karatantcheva has won back-to-back challenger tournaments.

"Now there is more pressure," Karatantcheva said. "You were No 35 in the world, and everybody thinks you should be killing everybody. But there have been a lot of changes on the tour. The competition has raised a lot."

The brash Bulgarian needed some steroids in the past to cover her mouth:

Karatantcheva boasted that she was looking forward to "kicking (Sharapova's) butt off." In front of a standing-room only crowd on one of the outer courts, Sharapova beat Karatantcheva in three sets.

In 2005 she gained worldwide attention with a shocking upset of Venus Williams at the French Open. She went on to become the seventh-youngest French Open quarter-finalist since the Open Era began in 1968.

But less than a year later she was slapped with a two-year ban after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone.