Dear Wimbledon,
No event in sport has fueled a lifetime of memories quite as yours has.
And yet I’ll not be watching you this year.
Few sports have have compelled me to walk away or boycott them.[1]I cannot recall a single score or game from the 2019-20 NBA season due to the incessant political demonstrations of the league and its players. Each day scoreboards were lit up, players’ … Continue reading Yet you are now part of that list.
Your decision to ban “all players from Russia and Belarus” from the All England Club’s annual fortnight is reckless and unnecessary. It sets a terrible precedent, judging as it does people on their nationality rather than on any other values they might embody.
Dipping your toes into the political cesspool is rarely a good idea but it’s worse when the move denies people their dignity and ostracizes them for things over which they exercise little to no choice.
Your decision follows a recommendation in February from the International Olympic Committee that global sports federations bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from their competitions. This is the same IOC that has approved multi-billion dollar Olympic competition to occur in places like Russia and China.[2]If unjust acts of war are the criteria for the ban how have any British players, under the historical influence of the British Empire, ever competed in the event? What about U.S. players whose … Continue reading
These same banned players, I’m sure, have struggled to not feel like pariahs in lorckerrooms and filled stadia.
But Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev are not Vladimir Putin, anymore than are Aryna Sabalenka and Victoria Azarenka.
They don’t deserve this. If anything they deserve your support and encouragement. Even your hospitality.
Yes, a far stronger message would be sent if you were to embrace rather than castigate them. At this crucial global moment you would send a message that the world, if not Russia, is a welcoming place, capable of gestures of human kindness, reflective of the best of us, even in times of peril.
Your move demonstrates the opposite. As such, barring a change in policy toward my fellow global citizens, I’ll be foregoing this fortnight.
Yours truly,
Dimitri Gatsiounis
Notes, etc.
| ↑1 | I cannot recall a single score or game from the 2019-20 NBA season due to the incessant political demonstrations of the league and its players. Each day scoreboards were lit up, players’ jerseys and courts were emblazoned with BLM. Players took a knee before every game and virtue signaling went into high gear with regular walkouts by the players. Games themselves were boycotted over Jacob Blake’s altercation with police. I too boycotted the league for its pandering to a movement whose reasoning seemed so out of touch. |
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| ↑2 | If unjust acts of war are the criteria for the ban how have any British players, under the historical influence of the British Empire, ever competed in the event? What about U.S. players whose country has waged its own illegal wars? And what of present-day Chinese players and their country’s human rights violations? |