French Open: Boos for Marta Kostjuk of Ukraine at tennis in Paris

Tennis matches usually end with the match point. However, the first encounter, which was played at the French Open on Sunday on the Philippe Chatrier court, only really picked up speed after the last rally - but in the wrong direction. After the defeated Marta Kostjuk energetically walked to the net, shook hands with the referee and not her opponent Aryna Sabalenka, many spectators in the largest tennis stadium in Paris began to boo and whistle.

Thomas Klemm

Sports editor.

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The fact that Kostjuk comes from Ukraine, that her hometown of Kyiv had been subjected to the heaviest Russian drone attack since the invasion in February 2022 the night before, apparently did not bother viewers. They wanted everything to be the same as always: one athlete shakes hands with the other after the game, no matter what the circumstances. "I wasn't prepared for that," Kostiuk said. She felt that "people" should be ashamed of themselves. "Ten years after the end of the war, they won't feel good about what they've done."

"No one can understand this"

The fact that the Belarusian Sabalenka bowed gratefully like a matador at the end made the whole affair even worse. She was confused because she thought the audience had whistled at her, the world number two later explained. When asked, the Belarusian, who has to compete as a neutral athlete on the professional tour, said of the expressions of displeasure in the direction of her opponent: "She does not deserve to leave the court in this way."

Marta Kostjuk has been one of the strongest voices in the tennis circus for months when it comes to the war of aggression by the Russians and their Belarusian comrades-in-arms on her homeland. For a twenty-year-old, she condemns the Russian war of aggression and how it has been dealt with in the sports world in an astonishingly reflective way. She set up a foundation for the benefit of those who stayed at home and for this reason returned to her homeland for a short time at the end of March instead of lingering on her sporting exile in Monaco.

The inclined Parisian tennis audience didn't know about it or didn't want to know anything about it. From a distance, the devastating war against an entire people seemed to them to be less important than a sporting gesture at the end of a competition. The matches must go on - so the French Open had its first scandal in the first game of the first day.

The officials would also like to see sport and war somehow separated: starting with the International Olympic Committee, which would like to see professional tennis as a shining example of a functioning coexistence between Ukrainians and Russians; then the high gentlemen of the Association of Professional Tennis Players WTA, who want to stand by the ladies from Ukraine without taking action; and last but not least, the presenters at the French Open, who are pushing for harmless questions about the end of the game at press conferences, although the whole world is much more interested in how the Russian and Belarusian tennis professionals feel about the war and how the players from Ukraine are coping with the situation. "No one can understand what we have been going through for months," Marta Kostjuk said, not for the first time.

Unlike the Parisian spectators, Aryna Sabalenka has been used for months not to being shaken hands by Ukrainians like Kostiuk. She does not take it personally, but suspects what otherwise "will happen to them from the Ukrainian side." What else could be gotten out of the Belarusian: a rejection of the war, which was a tad clearer than in the past 15 months: "No one in the world supports the war, not even Russian and Belarusian athletes. If we could stop him, we would."

When Kostjuk hears such statements from her not-so-dear competitors, she has to catch her breath for a moment. She knows very well tennis players who support the war, said the 39th in the world rankings. Perhaps, she advises, it would be better to ask Sabalenka and the other representatives of the warring parties specifically who they think should win the war. "I don't think these people will then say they want Ukraine to win." She could not respect Sabalenka as long as she, as one of the world's best players, did not take a concrete stand on the platforms available to her.

Incidentally, Aryna Sabalenka won the first round match against Marta Kostjuk after 1:11 hours 6: 3 and 6: 2. In the second round, a kind of friendly match awaits her – she meets her compatriot Irina Shymanovich.