Australian Open forced to BOW DOWN, will allow ‘Where is Peng Shuai?’ shirts in Melbourne Park
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Peng Shuai
The 2022 Australian Open is in its second week and despite the high-end action taking place in the matches, the tournament continues to be dragged in controversies. Despite the Novak Djokovic situation calming down and focus shifting back towards tennis, another controversy popped at the tournament.
Few activists were stopped by security officials in Melbourne Park as they were carrying banners and shirts having the text ‘Where is Peng Shuai?‘ in support of the Chinese player Peng Shuai whose security and well being seems to have been compromised after she made allegations of sexual assault on Zhang Gaoli, a high-ranked Chinese politician and since then the player has retracted her comments after having disappeared for a week and reappearing mysteriously.
Tennis Australia had then come forward and issued a statement explaining that rules of entry are mentioned on the tickets as well which ‘not allowing banners, signs or clothing that are commercial or political’. However, this statement did not go well and the tournament was criticised a lot by former players and spectators as well for not standing with their own player.
However, with the increasing backlash that was damaging the tournament, Craig Tiley, CEO of Tennis Australia and the Tournament Director of Australian Open came forward and diffused the situation and allowed the t-shirts further saying that the security officials would take action on a ‘case-by-case’ situation.
“Yes, as long as they are not coming as a mob to be disruptive but are peaceful. It’s all been a bit lost in translation from some people who are not here and don’t really know the full view. The situation in the last couple of days is that some people came with a banner on two large poles and we can’t allow that. If you are coming to watch the tennis that’s fine, but we can’t allow anyone to cause a disruption at the end of the day,” said Tiley in conversation with AFP.
Peng Shuai is an Australian Open runner-up
In the singles discipline, Peng’s best Grand Slam result came at the 2014 US Open where she made it to the semi-finals. In the Australian Open and Wimbledon, she reached the 4th round and at the French Open, she could reach till the 3rd round only.
However, her best results came in the doubles discipline. A former World No. 1 in doubles, she won the 2013 Wimbledon and the 2014 French Open while reaching the semi-finals of the 2017 US Open having earlier finished as the runner-up at the 2017 Australian Open as well.
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Sarthak Shitole
(3462 Articles Published)