WTA clarifies its stance after Czech Republic DEPORTS Russian player as Prague Open bans Belarusians as well
WTA initiates recent ban on Russian and Belarussian players for the upcoming WTA 250 tournament in Prague scheduled to start this week.
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WTA logo(left) and CEO Steve Simon(right). (credits: WTA)
Since last year, the Russian and Belarussian players have received a lot of bashing and have been banned from quite a few tournaments. After the tennis agencies and sports committees found a way of allowing them to perform at the competition under a neutral flag and nationality, many countries opposed this motion with several Ukrainian players even standing against WTA and ATP for this.
Now, at the Prague Open, which starts this week, the Czech Republican board has decided to deny the Russian and Belarusian players entry into the competition. Players such as Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina and Belarus’ Aliaksandra Sasnovich were set to play in the competition under a neutral flag but the Czech government’s decision to revoke their visas ahead of the tournament has raised a lot of commotion.
Even WTA had its say in the incident issuing a statement that said, “Individual WTA players whose nationality is Russian/Belarusian continue to compete on the Tour on a neutral basis. Despite their neutrality, some WTA players are being denied by Czech government authorities the ability to compete at the WTA 250 event scheduled to be held in Prague next week. WTA rules state that all players must be allowed to compete on the WTA based solely on merit, without discrimination. We will continue to review the situation as we factor important considerations around these complex geopolitical issues.”
How will this year’s Prague Open fare out?
Prague Open is considered one of the toughest WTA 250 tournaments in the world, and a lot of players have their eyes on this competition. And with such an incident arising just a week before the start of the first round, a lot of commotion has arisen. The tournament director, Miroslav Maly has also made it very clear regarding their decision of not allowing any Russian and Belarussian players to enter their country.
Maly mentioned, “The management of the tournament fully respects the current stance of state authorities. We do not expect any player with Russian or Belarusian citizenship to take part in the tournament in this situation.”
Although WTA is fighting to resolve the issue as soon as possible, as things stand, there would be no involvement of Russian players. Meanwhile, stars like Alize Cornet, Zhang Shuai, and Zhu Lin would be looking to dethrone last year’s champion Marie Bouzkova.
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Soumyadeep Mondal
(882 Articles Published)