“Clearly not on our side!” Marta Kostyuk criticizes the authorities at Cincinnati for the way the Ukrainian flag incident was handled
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Marta Kostyuk and Lola, the spectator with the Ukrainian flag
Marta Kostyuk, the 20-year-old Ukrainian player does not have much consistency with her performances this season with early exits at most of the WTA events, with only managing to reach the third round at the Australian Open but losing to Paula Badosa. She was about to play at a charity exhibition match before the US Open in 2022 to raise funds for the people affected by the war but she denied participation in the event over the presence of a few Russian and Belarus players.
Kostyuk has time and again stood in support of her country and has strongly put forward her opinions on social media platforms on various issues. She has even voiced out about the Ukrainian players receiving no support from the officials and has even criticized the authorities for allowing Russian and Belarusian players to continue playing on the Tour despite the two nations being at war. Since Belarus helped Russia during the war, the ATP and WTA have suspended the Russian and Belarusian Tennis Federations with the players from the two nations without their national flag and playing as neutral athletes.
“Our requests to do something are completely ignored” Marta Kostyuk on the insensitive behavior of the authorities towards Ukrainian players
During the qualifiers match between two Russian players Anna Kalinskaya and Anastasia Potapova at the Cincinnati Open, one of the local spectators, later identified as Lola, was present in the stands for the qualifiers draped in the Ukrainian flag and wearing a Ukrainian floral wreath crown. This caught the attention of the players and she was further escorted out of the stadium and will only be allowed only on the condition if she enters without the flag as the flag size had exceeded the standard size of the permit.
Marta Kostyuk expressed her displeasure and criticized the actions shown by the officials of the Cincinnati Open toward the spectator supporting Ukraine. She highlighted the favoritism shown towards the Russian and Belarus players with less support for the players of Ukraine. She added “The WTA is very protective of Russian and Belarusian athletes, they say that NONE of them support Russia and they are all great. But, as we can see, their trigger point is the Ukrainian flag. And the fact that the trigger for us is those Russians and Belarusians who support Russia is no longer of interest to anyone. Our requests to do something are completely ignored”
She further added that “From the very beginning, we understood that they were clearly not on our side, unfortunately. But no one thought that it would reach such an absurdity. In the future, we hope our actions will be known, we are doing this. The cheerleader was removed from the podium was said to be that the flag was too big. Cincinnati itself exhibited a huge Spanish flag, which they hung on the podium. It’s so cynical, there’s no limit to it.“
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Prateek Pradhan
(601 Articles Published)