Aryna Sabalenka MATTHEW STOCKMAN / AFP
Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, world number two, says she has never felt so much hatred from some Ukrainian players on the WTA Tour.
Belarusian world number two Aryna Sabalenka lamented on Tuesday having been confronted with “hatredof some Ukrainians on the world circuit, since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022. “It was really, really hard for me, because I had never faced so much hate in the locker room.“, she said Tuesday in Miami, on the sidelines of the WTA tournament, in response to a question about what she described as “des tensionsbetween her and Ukrainian players. “Obviously on Instagram there are a lot of people who hate you as soon as you lose matches, but what I experienced in the dressing room, I had never faced it“, she continued.
«We didn’t fight, but we had some weird conversations, not with the girls, but with their staff members. Really it was a hard time, but now it’s better“, testified the Belarusian champion, who has the right to compete on the world circuit but under a neutral banner, as well as the Russian athletes. “I had a hard time understanding that there are so many people who hate me for no reason, no reason. I mean, I didn’t do anything“, insisted the winner of the Australian Open.
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Sabalenka claims to be better now: “I realized that it wasn’t my fault and that I had done them no harm. And I’m sure the other Russian and Belarusian athletes didn’t do anything to the Ukrainians either». «I just realized that these are all emotions and I have to ignore them, focus on myself (…) I can’t control other people’s emotions“, she explained. In Indian Wells last week, Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko withdrew rather than face Sabalenka, saying she had a “panic attack” following a conversation with WTA CEO Steve Simon , which tried to justify the fact that Russians and Belarusians were not excluded from the circuit.