Aryna Sabalenka’s day began with a routine demolition of Russia’s Kamilla Rakhimova, who propelled the world number two, who hails from Belarus, into the second week of the French Open as expected.
But then Sabalenka once again put herself, the tournament and tennis at the center of the debate over sport and the war in Ukraine by refusing to attend the mandatory post-match press conference. She said she had felt unsafe at an earlier press conference this week when a journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka about her support for Belarusian President Alexandr G. Lukashenko, who has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“On Wednesday I didn’t feel safe during the press conference,” Sabalenka said at the beginning of a transcript of her statements following her 6-2, 6-2 win over Rakhimova. “I need to be able to feel safe doing interviews with the journalists after my matches. For my own mental health and wellbeing I have decided to take myself out of this situation today and the tournament has supported me in this decision.
Cédric Laurent, a spokesman for the French tennis federation, the FFT, which organizes this Grand Slam tournament, which has been dominated by geopolitics from the start, said federation officials learned from Sabalenka after the match that she would not participate in the press conference.
French Open officials approved Sabalenka’s decision for Friday’s match, but said no decision had yet been made about her press conferences for the remainder of the tournament.
Laurent said a “pool” had been selected to interview Sabalenka, but declined to specify who was in the pool or whether they were members of the independent news media or worked for the tournament or women’s tennis tour, the WTA.
A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the matter said only one person – a WTA employee – asked questions in the pool interview.
A person familiar with the WTA’s actions, who was also not authorized to speak on the matter, said the organization supported Sabalenka’s desire not to participate in the press conference and the way her statements were made.
Sabalenka’s representatives at IMG, the sports and entertainment company that is part of Endeavor, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Sabalenka decision comes two years after a confrontation with Naomi Osaka over attending press conferences led to her dropping out of the French Open. Osaka announced on social media before the start of the tournament that she would not participate in the press conferences to protect her mental health and pay any fines she received.
After Osaka skipped the press conference following her opening-round victory, she was fined $15,000 by the tournament referee and the leaders of the four Grand Slam competitions – the Australian, French and US Opens, and Wimbledon – threatened that she would be kicked out of the tournament. tournament would be ruled out. the French Open and faces harsher penalties if she fails to meet her media obligations.
Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s top-ranked players at the time, retired the next day, announcing for the first time that she was battling depression and planning to take a break from tennis. She returned seven weeks later, only to step away again in the fall of 2021. She battled injuries for much of 2022 and is now pregnant with her first child, though she has said she plans to return after birth turn.
In the case of Sabalenka, the decision came after two tense conversations with Daria Meshcheriakova, a part-time journalist from Ukraine who works for Tribuna, a sports publication in the country.
During the first exchange, Meshcheriakova asked Sabalenka what her message to the world was about the war and why she had claimed that Ukrainian players “hated” her. Sabalenka denied saying that and then spoke as openly as she ever had about the war.
“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, supports the war. Nobody,” says Sabalenka, who lives in Miami. “How can we support the war? No one, normal people will never support it.”
Three days later, after Sabalenka’s second-round match, Meshcheriakova challenged her about a letter she supposedly signed in 2020 in support of Lukashenko, “during times when he tortured and beat up protesters in the streets”, and about participating in a New Year party with him.
The letter that Sabalenka supposedly signed has not been made public, and her New Year’s celebration with the Belarusian president has not been independently verified, although there are many photos of Sabalenka and Lukashenko together. In an interview on Friday, Meshcheriakova, who left Kiev for the Netherlands 10 days after the war started when missiles landed close to her apartment and whose parents still live in Russian-occupied Luhansk, said she had heard of the letter and the New Year’s celebration from prominent Belarusian journalists who were forced to leave the country.
“It’s true,” said Meshcheriakova, “and you saw how she reacted.”
Sabalenka said she had no comments on either question, then began answering Meshcheriakova’s next question: “So you basically support everything because you can’t speak? You’re not a little person, Aryna.’
But Sabalenka quickly interrupted herself when a moderator stated that Sabalenka had made it clear she did not want to comment further.
“It is clear to all of us,” Meshcheriakova said at the end of the exchange.
Elina Svitolina, a sort of unofficial leader of the tour’s Ukrainian members, said they just wanted to hear from players representing Russia and Belarus that they think their country should end the war.
“I think almost all Ukrainians would like to hear that from their side,” Svitolina said after her three-set win over Russia’s Anna Blinkova.
Like the other Ukrainian players, Svitolina Blinkova did not shake hands after the match.
“Can you imagine the boy or girl who’s on the front lines right now, you know, looking at me and I’m pretending nothing’s wrong,” Svitolina said. “I represent my country. I have a voice.”
Sabalenka will play Sloane Stephens from the United States in the fourth round on Sunday. It is not yet clear whether she will have to deal with reporters after the game.
Meshcheriakova, who works as a political analyst in addition to sports reporting, said she returned to her day job after Saturday. She said she used vacation time to report on the tournament and paid her own expenses.
In Osaka’s case, tournament officials said not requiring Osaka to attend press conferences could give her an unfair advantage over other players.
Stephens, who is a member of the WTA Players’ Council, said on Friday that she supported Sabalenka’s decision not to attend her press conference, and that every player had the right to feel safe in fulfilling her media obligations.
“Everyone needs to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing,” Stephens said. “If she doesn’t feel safe, she doesn’t need to be there. That’s the end of that.”
Meshcheriakova said she spoke with her parents earlier in the day. Her mother, she said, had been watching Russian media coverage of the story, which described her using the Russian words for a black transvestite. She begged her daughter to stop covering the tournament and leave immediately.
“Of course I told her I wouldn’t,” Meshcheriakova said. “I’m a journalist.”