Wimbledon denies discriminating against Maria Sharapova for the Parade of Champions due to her Russian nationality amidst the ban on the players
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Maria Sharapova
Maria Sharapova is among the biggest tennis stars in modern times and she shot to fame at the tender age of 17 years, when she demolished the then two-time defending Serena Williams 6-1, 6-4 to win the Wimbledon title in 2004. It was the beginning of Sharapova’s long and accomplished career and won four more grand slam titles after that. Though Sharapova’s career was filled with instances of injury and an unfortunate break due to the ‘doping scandal’. Sharapova retired from tennis in 2020 and she is now a successful businesswoman based in the United States.
Even though Sharapova has lived in the US almost all of her life, she still holds Russian citizenship and even represented Russia till her retirement. Currently, Sharapova is pregnant and is expecting her first child. Wimbledon 2022 marked the 100 years of the center court and organized a ‘Parade of Champions‘ to celebrate the great champions beginning from the 1960s to the current champions. They were invited to a gala at the center court to celebrate this milestone in Wimbledon history. Sharapova was absent from the ceremony and her glorious win was also not a part of the video montage honoring the champions.
Wimbledon defends its negligence by saying they only invited the winners who were likely to show up.
The absence of Sharapova from the ‘Parade of Champions’ as well as her exclusion from the video montage did not go unnoticed as people started asking questions if this discrimination against Sharapova was due to the fact that she holds Russian citizenship. The Wimbledon’s chief did not lend any comment on whether Sharapova was invited saying that they only invited the winners who were likely to show up and who were not very far from London. Though Sharapova’s pregnancy would have made it difficult for her to attend the parade, it is still not known if she was invited.
On the question of the exclusion of Sharapova’s winning clip from the 2004 Wimbledon final, their answer was that since the time for the video was limited, it was not possible for them to include all of the one-time winners clips in the montage. All of these answers seem to indicate the fact that this might be true that after Wimbledon decided to ban the Russian and Belarusian players due to Russia’s war on Ukraine, they would not be willing to honor a winner who holds Russian citizenship.
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Prateek Sinha
(365 Articles Published)