Lesia Tsurenko’s coach laments Daniil Medvedev and Aryna Sabalenka for siding with ‘MURDERERS’ and still staying silent
Lesia Tsurenko’s coach, Nikita Vlasov looked back on the Ukraine invasion and fired shots against players Aryna Sabalenka and Daniil Medvedev.
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Aryna Sabalenka(left) and Daniil Medvedev(right).
In the year 2022, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many sports authorities banned Russian and Belarussian sportspersons from participating in several sports and some tennis tournaments also followed this rule. Ukraine tennis player Lesia Tsurenko’s coach Nikita Vlasov had looked back on this incident and fired shots against players such as Aryna Sabalenka and Daniil Medvedev. This incident was caused after Lesia played Sabalenka in the third-round match of the Indian Wells Masters.
Tsurenko decided to not play the match against Sabalenka with the reason later revealed that she was surviving a panic attack which was caused by her interview with WTA CEO Steve Simon. This interview was involving the decision of banishing Russian and Belarussian players from the 2024 Paris Olympics and Tsurenko revealed that this conversation was going through her head for days and this is what caused the attack before the match.
Her coach later struck at Russian and Belarussian players saying, “I don’t want to be on the side of the killers. Medvedev, Sabalenka… They have millions of fans on social networks. What is their message? The silence. One day their children will study the history and invasion of Ukraine. How will they respond when their children ask them, ‘Why did we attack Ukraine? What were you doing at that time?’ They will say that they weren’t interested in politics, that they were only tennis players. It is pathetic.”
What was Aryna Sabalenka’s view about Lesia Tsurenko’s panic attack and her withdrawal?
World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka was deeply saddened by Tsurenko’s decision of withdrawing from the tournament saying that she is trying hard and has already begun taking several steps in order to improve the relations between their countries.
She said, “I still have this belief that I did nothing bad to Ukraine; not me, not Russian athletes, not one of us did something bad. I think WTA are doing really great job to support both sides.”
Sabalenka also added that she feels Tsurenko was pressurized by her coach to withdraw from the match and that it played more role in her withdrawal than the political agenda or the panic attack. She continued saying that Tsurenko’s coach also put a lot of accusations on her due to which she had a really tough time the previous year.
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Soumyadeep Mondal
(882 Articles Published)