FORNEBU (Nettavisen): In September last year, Casper Ruud created a fierce debate when he shared a photo of a dinner from an elderly center with his 92,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter.
– That the “welfare state” is unable to provide better food to the elderly who have helped build up our country? Is it the thank you for working hard a lifetime? Tragic… wrote the 25-year-old at the time.
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The tennis star is not in the habit of speaking out on topics other than his sport, but when he is really passionate about something he is not afraid to speak his mind.
When Nettavisen met Ruud in connection with the UTS tennis tournament which was organized in Telenor Arena earlier this month, the 25-year-old opened up about why he has sporadically spoken out about politics in his social channels.
– As a teenager, you don’t care that much about politics, but when you grow up, you care more about it – that’s natural, Ruud begins to Nettavisen.
– Is this what we pay for?
Ruud ended up deleting the message on X about the food offer at an old people’s home after it turned out that the photo he shared was from an old people’s home in Innlandet in 2022 and not a recent photo from an old people’s home in Drammen, as he wrote.
Despite the fact that the tennis star deleted the original tweet, he explained in a new post that on a general basis he still stands by his opinions, and a few weeks later it slammed once again from the 25-year-old.
This time it was the politicians who got to hear it.
Now Ruud explains why he lashed out at the politicians just before the state budget was to be announced:
– After that, what shall I say, the “blunder” I had where I had a bit of wrong sources and got a bit of criticism, then the algorithms changed so that I got an insane amount more politics in my feed. So then I caught myself reading many posts. It was also right before the local elections, so I reacted to the fact that politicians are in a way paid by the taxpayers through the public state budget, explains Ruud, and continues:
– When they then spend minutes or hours of a working day teasing each other online, I reacted to that. Is that what we pay them to do?
Below you can see the X message Ruud refers to:
It will be exciting to see the new state budget when it is presented.
I hope all Norwegian taxpayers don’t have to “fund” the salary of politicians who spend hours of their working days teasing and hanging out other politicians on X or in other social media.— Casper Ruud (@CasperRuud98) September 21, 2023
The tennis star clarifies that he is not referring to the general job politicians do with his statement, but rather everything politicians do that is not part of their job description.
– And I know that they do a lot more than that, but that’s why the next post came. I think it’s starting to get a bit awkward. They have their debates and they keep it up in the media, I don’t think they need to spend several hours of an official working day teasing each other online. I think that would be a bit silly.
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Enough politics for a while
Ruud believes that everyone should have the opportunity to express themselves politically, regardless of whether you are a politician or a sports star.
– As a Norwegian and a Norwegian citizen, I think you have a right to observe and have opinions about how things are managed, and you are either scolded or agreed with based on the angle you take it from, says Ruud.
With that said, however, it is far from certain that we will see statements from the 25-year-old in the near future.
– Will we see more political statements from you in the future?
– Well… Most likely not. That’s enough politics now for a while, laughs Ruud.
Ruud probably wouldn’t have had much time for politics anyway. In the coming weeks, the various tournaments on the ATP tour will come like pearls on a string for the Norwegian in the coming time.
The boy from Snarøya will play tournaments almost every weekend for the next few months, and everything is leading up to the tournament he wants to win more than any other:
Roland Garros.
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Ruud himself has been clear that winning one of the four “Grand Slam” tournaments is what he wants most – more than becoming number one in the world – and there is nowhere he has come closer than on the red clay in French The Open tournament “Roland Garros” which is played in Paris.
In both 2022 and 2023, the 25-year-old made it all the way to the final, but had to see himself beaten by Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic respectively.
Ruud lost both finals in straight sets, but there is still reason to believe that he will be able to bite on his favorite surface in 2024.
At least if we are to believe Danish Holger Rune:
– He had an incredibly good chance to be number one at the time. Who knows, we’ll see in the future, says Rune to Nettavisen, and aims for the final against Nadal in 2022.
The French Open tournament starts on May 26.