Florida, March 16: Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) chief Steve Simon said that Russian and Belarusian players should not be banned from tournaments because of the “decision their government has made.” Russian and Belarusian players are not allowed to compete under their country’s flags and names following Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. “You never know what the future may bring.
But I can tell you that we have never banned athletes from participating on our tour as the result of political positions their leadership may take,” BBC quoted Simon as saying. Other international sports governing bodies such as badminton, weightlifting, shooting, etc have banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in the tournaments. “So it would take something very, very significant for that to change, but again we don’t know where this is going.”
“I feel very, very strongly that again these individual athletes should not be the ones that are being penalised by the decisions of an authoritarian leadership that is obviously doing terrible, reprehensible things,” he added. “But if that happens, which is again part of the overall strategy of making Russia, and Russian citizens, pay the consequence for the decision their government has made, then it won’t be something that we support. I am hoping that we continue with the sanctions, we continue doing everything we can to get peace, but again these people are the innocent victims of that, and being isolated as a result of these decisions I don’t think it’s fair,” he said.
As a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, WTA and ATP combined events scheduled to take place in Moscow in October have been suspended. All the International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments in Russia and Belarus have also been cancelled.
