PARTSI: Reigning French Open champion Iga Swiatek says the Ukraine war has caused \u201cchaos\u201d in the world of sport.
\nIn an interview with French daily Le Monde on Tuesday, the Pole also hit out at the ruling bodies of tennis, the ATP and WTA, saying they had failed to provide leadership on the issue of Ukrainian players facing Russians on the court.
\n\u201cThere are indeed tensions among the players, sometimes the atmosphere in the locker room is quite heavy,\u201d the 21-year-old said.
\n\u201cAt the beginning of the conflict, there was a lack of leadership on the part of the tennis authorities, we were not brought together to explain how we were supposed to manage this complex situation and how to behave.
\n\u201cThose who are in the worst position are the Ukrainian players and it would be good if we paid more attention to what they feel and what they endure.\u201d
\nHer fears were illustrated on Sunday when Ukraine\u2019s Marta Kostyuk was booed at the French Open for refusing to shake hands with Belarusian opponent Aryna Sabalenka.
\nKostyuk said the Paris crowd should \u201cfeel embarrassed\u201d by their actions.
\nSwiatek, whose country neighbors Ukraine, was asked if she would support the participation of athletes from Russia and their ally Belarus at the Paris Olympics next year.
\n\u201cIt is not for us as athletes to make such a decision,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is currently a kind of chaos in sport and the most important thing is not to make it worse, to share values that are the right ones and to be clear that we cannot tolerate the ongoing war.\u201d
\nRussia and Belarus were banned from international competition following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,
\nIn March this year, the International Olympic Committee recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes return to international competition, without commenting on their possible presence at the Paris Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARTSI: Reigning French Open champion Iga Swiatek says the Ukraine war has caused \u201cchaos\u201d in the world of sport. In an interview with French daily Le Monde on Tuesday, the Pole also hit out at the ruling bodies of tennis, the ATP and WTA, saying they had failed to provide leadership on the issue of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-334316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n