“Your country is at war and you out here embarassing yourself.” “I hope you never touch a racket again.” “Fixer player.” “Do you need a new brain?” “I hope Russia kills all yu sh***y Ukranians, lose to a Japanese.” These were just some of the messages that Ukranian tennis player Elina Svitolina received on Instagram after her straight-sets loss to Naomi Osaka in the quarter-finals of the National Bank Open on Tuesday night.
Svitolina didn’t hold back as she revealed a bunch of these private messages as well as comments on her profile, calling out the deluge of hateful abuse she received online from frustrated gamblers after losing a match. “To all the bettors: I’m a mum before I’m an athlete,” Svitolina wrote in her Instagram story. “The way you talk to women — to mothers — is SHAMEFUL. If your mothers saw your messages, they’d be disgusted.”
The abuse was directed at her, while other racial slurs also targeted her husband, the French tennis player Gael Monfils.
Less than six months after giving birth, Svitolina had returned to the tour at the WTA 500 green clay event in Charleston in April 2023. And less than two months later, she won her first WTA title as a mother, in Strasbourg. She is one of the many mothers currently active on the tour, including her opponent on the night in Canada, Naomi Osaka.
“For sure I have high goals, and I always had high goals for myself, and I have ultimate goals, like I think every tennis player, to win a Grand Slam and become No.1 in the world. But I think it’s important to also realise the journey that I had over the years, being in the top 10, top five for some years, it also can be enough,” Svitolina had told Roland Garros website in an interview last year.
“Because for sure when you get pregnant, you hope that everything goes well, but also have to see realistically that maybe I will not be able to come back. So in that moment, it took me some months to realise, to maybe have a different perspective as well about my career, and that’s why I think it also helped me when I had the chance to come back. Actually, I think with zero expectations, I came back even quicker because I was not expecting to come back in Charleston.”
Earlier this year, British player Katie Boulter said she received death threats during the French Open targeting her and her family, while the WTA and ITF called on betting companies to do more to stem the flood of online abuse players face on social media.
Boulter told the BBC in an interview that online abuse has become the norm and that she thinks many of the messages are sent by people who are placing bets on tennis matches. Her comments coincided with the WTA and ITF publishing a first season-wide report into online abuse, showing that 458 tennis players were targeted by more than 8,000 abusive comments and posts on social media in 2024. The report said 40% of the abuse came from “angry gamblers.”
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It is not just a tennis problem. Badminton players too have faced severe online abuse from disgruntled bettors. A couple of years back, Scottish shuttler Kirsty Gilmour had spoken out against a similar issue in badminton. “It’s always from an anonymous account, no picture, no followers,” she told BBC. “My best guess is they are betting on matches and lost and they decided to take it out on me. It is never someone that’s watched the match and knows about badminton the sport. I am basically a random horserace to them and it’s not gone their way so they get personal.”
Indian doubles star Chirag Shetty had backed up Gilmour’s claims. “Yeah like someone criticising a player is okay (you don’t feel great) but it’s okay to voice your opinion on someone playing good or bad. But to give someone threats similar to what Kirsty faced is just not done. Have received similar things in the past where they say all kinds of rubbish, ‘go die, I’ll kill you’, etc which obviously is because they might have put money on you and have lost,” Chirag had said then.
(With AP inputs)
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
