Tennis player from the aggressor country complained that speaking without her flag feels like “out of nowhere”
Belarusian tennis player Arina Sobolenko complained that she felt “like out of nowhere”, speaking at international tournaments under a neutral status.
“It’s really terrible because nobody supports the war – nobody. The problem is that you need to talk about it loudly … but why shout about it on every corner? It won’t help at all. We have zero control in this situation.”
“I’m just very disappointed that sport is somehow connected with politics. We are just athletes doing our sport. That’s all. We are not talking about politics. If we could all do something, we would do it, but we have no control.
“They banned us from Wimbledon and what did that change? Nothing – everything goes on, and this is the sad part of this situation.
In April, the organizers of Wimbledon decided to remove Russian and Belarusian tennis players from participation in the tournament in connection with the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine. The decision to remove athletes from Russia and Belarus was supported by Andy Murray, as well as the Tennis Federation of Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland.
Novak Djokovic and Andrei Rublev opposed the inadmissibility of representatives of the aggressor countries to Wimbledon. The ATP has filed a lawsuit against the National Tennis Governing Body in the UK, demanding a million dollars for the suspension of tennis players from Russia and Belarus.
Source: Sportarena
I’m Rose Brown , a journalist and writer with over 10 years of experience in the news industry. I specialize in covering tennis-related news for Athletistic, a leading sports media website. My writing is highly regarded for its quick turnaround and accuracy, as well as my ability to tell compelling stories about the sport.
