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Ukrainian tennis players could withdraw from tournaments in protest

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Ukrainian tennis players could withdraw from tournaments in protest

Last year Wimbledon banned Russian and Belarusian tennis players, this year we risk living a good part of the season without their Russian and Belarusian colleagues. According to reports from L’Equipe, the Ukrainian Olympic Committee is about to ban all its athletes from taking part in events in which Russians or Belarusians participate.
Just tennis in the last period has been at the center of a bitter controversy between the two sides. The Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko withdrew from Indian Wells due to a nervous breakdown following an interview in which the head of the WTA, Steve Martin, had confirmed the position of the Tennis Association against a new ban. In the same days the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, the number 2 in the world, denounced the ‘climate of hostility’ that reigns in the locker room towards the Russian and Belarusian players. Poland’s Iga Swiatek, world number 1, meanwhile lined up alongside Tsurenko but was criticized by the other Belarusian champion Vika Azarenka. In short, the tension is very high.

The hypothesis of the anti-Russian lockout in Kiev, however, does not find the federtennis of Kiev, who wrote an open letter in which he calls for a rethink because the decision to withdraw from the tournaments would mean “the destruction of Ukrainian tennis”. The letter explains that “the International Tennis Federation was the first major federation to suspend the national federations of Russia and Belarus. Teams from these countries have been banned from all team competitions without exception, including the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup. Admission of individual athletes is only possible under the neutral flag.”

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According to Serghi Lagur, president of the Ukrainian federation, who signed the appeal together with numerous tennis players, «depriving our athletes of the possibility of competing would be like losing one of the areas of the front. This decision will be a sanction not against the aggressors, but against Ukrainians who, each at their level, promote a pro-Ukrainian position in all parts of the world where they compete. We risk losing an important lever in the information war, we will not be able to inform about all the horrors that have happened in our country over the past year. If the Russians and Belarusians can compete, we must play with them and defeat them, not avoid them, as our armed forces boys and girls do at the front, and all conscious citizens, each in his place. We take a stand to continue participating in international competitions, intensifying the fight for the suspension of players from Russia and Belarus. We are beating them on courts all over the world. We must promote our common ideas and values ​​in the world and help the armed forces.’

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