World number one Tennis player Iga Swiatek expressed that Tennis has missed an opportunity to send a strong message to Moscow by failing to impose. A blanket ban on players from Russia and its ally Belarus after invading Ukraine, Wimbledon banned players from the two countries last year after the invasion.
But said in March it would now accept them as neutral athletes. They excluded players from the 2022 tournament on grounds of nationality for the first time since immediately after World War II, when German and Japanese players had been banned.” After World War II, German players as well as Japanese and Italian (players) faced restrictions. I have a feeling that something like that would show the Russian government that maybe it’s not worth it.” said Iga Swiatek from Poland told the BBC on Wednesday. “We’re just athletes, a small part of the world, but sport is beautiful. They’ve always used it as something important and as propaganda.
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Tennis could be a little bit better from the start. To show everyone that tennis players are against the war.” Tennis wasn’t like that, but now it would be pretty unfair for Russian and Belarusian players to do that because that decision should have been made a year ago.” Russian and Belarusian players competed as neutral athletes in the tours and in the other Grand Slams.
Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, who won this year’s Australian Open, said she struggled to understand the “hate” in the dressing room. Iga Swiatek defined the surrounding in the dressing room as “quiet tense”. “It’s not their mistake that they have this type of passport…their situation is quite complicated and they find it difficult to speak out loud about it.” said the 21-year-old.”On the other hand, we all have some kind of impact, and anything that would support preventing the Russian aggression. we should go that way in terms of the decisions that the federations make,” she added further.
