“Men’s matches appeal more” French Open director Amelie Mauresmo believes women’s matches not ‘worthy’ enough to be scheduled at night
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Amelie Mauresmo
Amelie Mauresmo former World number one and 2-time grand slam winner made history by becoming the first female to become the director of the French Open. Being French herself and being declared the director of one of the most prestigious tournaments meant a lot to her.
Amelie Mauresmo successfully managed to win both the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006. Amelie played her last match at the US Open back in 2009. After which she went into coaching and coached Andy Murray, Locus Pouille, and many more. She even became the captain of France for a team competition now referred to as the Billie Jean King Cup.
Just like her other occupations first as a player and as a coach, she also managed to handle the burden of directing a tournament as big as the French Open pretty calmy. The schedules and the level of matches were top-notch and attained huge viewership. There seemed to be some hiccups but nothing too big.
However, Amelie Mauresmo made a sexist comment in her recent press conference which was quite shocking. According to her, the women’s matches being played at the french open aren’t worthy enough to be scheduled during the night session.
Amelie Mauresmo believes men’s tennis is more appealing
Amelie Mauresmo was asked by Catherine Whitaker a renowned sports journalist about the reason behind only 1 out of 10 ‘match of the day’ is a women’s match. After which Amelie gave an extremely sexist response to the question.
She said, “In this era that we are in right now, I don’t feel — and as a woman, former woman’s player, I don’t feel bad or unfair saying that right now you have more attraction, more attractivity — can you say that? Appeal? That’s the general, for the men’s matches.”
“My goal was when I was doing the schedule every day to try and see, and from the first rounds, from the first round, when the draw came out, to try and see what match in the women’s draw can I put there, honestly. The confrontation or the star that I could put there. You know, you have all those parameters.”
“So that was tough. Honestly, I did really consider every day — not every day. That would be wrong. But most of the days, trying to see, and all the team, we were really focusing on this most of the time.”
“But yes, I admit it was tough. It was tough for more than one night to find, as you say, the match of the day. When you have this — it’s an interesting one, because as I was saying, the fact that it’s right now a one-match night session is tough on this. It is tough.”
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Parth Dubey
(314 Articles Published)