Close Menu
    Trending

    Will The WTA Continue To Make Things Worse In Paris?

    Sports 4 Mins Read
    Aryna Sabalenka
    Aryna Sabalenka

    First appeared in BOXSCORE

    By Aron Solomon

    Political things went from very bad to so much worse today at the French Open in the moments following Aryna Sabalenka’s quarter-final defeat of Elina Svitolina.

    Sabalenka waited at the net for a handshake from Svitolina that she knew full well was never going to come.

    I made my views crystal clear on this in real-time:

    Aryna Sabalenka is deeply Belarusian and a great source of national pride through the vehicle of sport. The political situation in Belarus has had a significant impact on the country’s sports system, and has for generations.

    Belarus’s sporting administration has been subject to direct government control under President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

    In Belarus, sport is a major way the government controls the country’s population, by hosting propaganda events such as the European Olympic Games, or by making athletes line up behind political leaders.

    Athletes, along with protesters, journalists, rights defenders, and political opposition figures, have been harassed and jailed in Belarus since an unprecedented wave of largely peaceful mass protests swept the country following the disputed August 9 presidential election.

    The Lukashenkas’ longtime control of the national Olympic committee means that the Olympic sport system is being used to intimidate and silence athletes in and from Belarus. No Russian and Belarusian government or state official can be invited to or accredited for any international sports event or meeting.

    The West has urged that Russian and Belarusian governing bodies should be suspended from international sport federations. Belarusian athletes who dare to speak out have paid a high price, and sport is now a battleground for reprisals in Belarus

    As Sabalenka looked towards her box today, she was also looking at her long-term boyfriend, former NHL player Konstantin Koltsov.

    Koltsov played professional ice hockey for 18 years, representing nine different teams in Russia

    and the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL. Koltsov won the Russian Super League in 2008 and several other cups and trophies throughout his career.

    At this point, it’s clear that Sabalenka is voluntarily being used or interjecting herself as a political immediate tool for the Russian in Belarusian governments. While that is sad but not surprising, what is very surprising and profoundly disappointing is that the WTA is doing nothing about it.

    The WTA and the French Open organizers have allowed Sabalenka to miss press conferences because she knows the kind of hard questions she’s going to get. She claims, perhaps justifiably so, that these questions endanger her mental health.

    But what an irony, this is, because, as I wrote and discussed at length, it was only two years ago that Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open because she wasn’t granted a similar privilege to Sabalenka.

    Osaka was receiving a lot of questions that she argued were damaging to her mental health, and she was not given the basic courtesy that Sabalenka, someone who is voluntarily being used as a tool for the invaders in what is quickly becoming a global war, has been given. This is remarkably unfair.

    The WTA again finds itself on the wrong side of history. Now having confirmed their historical return to China for close to two months of events, this fall, including the WTA tour finals, the WTA has

    Once again proven not that they are not above world geopolitical events, but that they couldn’t care less about them.

    Even though the disappearance of Peng Shuai has never been resolved, and remains as unclear today as when she disappeared from the public light, the WTA has chosen the path of money instead of doing the right thing.

    About Aron Solomon

    A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Aron Solomon, JD, is the Chief Legal Analyst for Esquire Digital and the Editor-in-Chief for Today’s Esquire. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. Aron has been featured in Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today, ESPN, TechCrunch, The Hill, BuzzFeed, Fortune, Venture Beat, The Independent, Fortune China, Yahoo!, ABA Journal, Law.com, The Bost

    Discover more from Today's Esquire

    Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

    Share.

    Keep Reading