ATP, WTA Hit Back At Wimbledon As Things Escalate Over Russia, Belarus Ban

Wow, huge step backwards by Wimbledon and the LTA. Even hard-boiled cold warriors would see this step as counter-productive.

The ATP and WTA should proclaim a boycott of this year’s Wimbledon tournament – and not recognize participation of its members and any results they might achieve. That’s the logical response.

April 20th, 2022 at 2:07 pm

I was drama-queening about the ban happening in another thread, then dreaming the year later a Russian winning and then giving Wimbledon and the Club and the Crown the maximum disrespect.

A ATP/WTA move could be they respect the boycott as long as the All-England Club realizes that they can hold it, ban Russians and Belorussians – but it will not be a ATP/WTA sanctioned event.
Meaning no points can be awarded due to fairness, players can skip the tournament without sanction, and 2022 Wimbledon will be treated as a private exhibition sporting event not carried in ATP/WTA record books save as an asterisk.

Wimbledon may argue that the event was not held in WWII, but that was different. England was at war. Wimbledon was commandeered for military training. BOMBs from Germany hit Centre Court, the Club proper, practice courts. UK is not at war with Russia at the moment, thank God!

April 20th, 2022 at 2:48 pm

“..2022 Wimbledon will be treated as a private exhibition sporting event ..”
That’s never going to happen.

April 20th, 2022 at 6:20 pm

Didn’t that deadhead Putin take over Crimea by force in 2014? No Russians banned that year.
The super-woke crowd at the ITF and other orgs are going to choke the life out of the sport, all in the name of meaningless virtue-signaling.
What about all the European countries still importing Russian oil products by the multi-billions of dollars/euros/rubles during so-called ‘sanctions” against Russia?
Hypocrites, the whole lot of them.

April 20th, 2022 at 8:55 pm

Virtue signalling and group think, these are the blight we suffer across social media, politics, TV shows, movies and of course sports.

It’s pointless to argue with people of the hive mind, all you can do is make sure you give them none of your resources, in particular your money.

They need to learn, they need to know that it is true, Go Woke Go Broke!

The board members, executive etc initially do not suffer when you withdraw your support but eventually it catches up with them when investors and shareholders evaporate. Then their salaries, their bonuses etc start to disappear and then it dawns on them that the common man does not buy into their rubbish.

In the meantime, players who give it their all have to suffer for something they had no hand in causing. The same thing has happened in Olympic games, sports people suffered but the politicians and bureacrats paid no price, God I hate them.

April 21st, 2022 at 3:25 am

Maybe these twits commenting here should actually google photos of destroyed Ukraine.

April 21st, 2022 at 7:12 pm

@You’re country next?

The only twit here is you as is evident by your ”name”.

Why dont you google photos of US-led bombing of Raqqa. Did we ban America players? no we did not cause politics have no place in sport. You’re obviously to much of a twit to understand that.

April 21st, 2022 at 8:19 pm

Also, I don’t see any virtue signalling concerns about Yemen.

Something like 10,000 children dead so far but as long as the media does not tell the hive mind to care, the hive mind does not care, doesn’t even know it’s happening in fact.

Brainless, can’t make their own decisions about a single thing.

April 25th, 2022 at 7:43 pm

In other news, Wimbledon has decided to go Novax required, so looks like Novax can play.

April 26th, 2022 at 7:14 am

“Father went to go get his 16 year old son from soccer practice, but instead had to take home a corpse with a piece of a rocket in the head”

Could be Ukrainian war-propaganda. Could be, I just don’t think it is.

And that piece of news did it for me. Though I have some first hand touch on Russian mentality and life that gives the common russite the benefit of the doubt, but at the end it is about a bunch of liers who because of a culture of cheating and macchiavelli’ism can’t make their country work regardless of the vast natural resources they have. So they have to steal. And kill the ones in their way. With basically arguments of a “great history”, religious arguments or whatever (one bunch of nazi fighters that has put their lives at stake defending and therefore gotten a place in the military ranks DOES NOT MAKE UKRAINE N.. how stupid can one be?!), but mostly because the system just doesn’t work. You can argue that western democracies are just equally pyramid schemes, just with a touch more finesse, but straight out slaughtering people because the bottom line is not working?

Rublev, Medvedev, Sabalenka.. they are born in nations where the common man, woman and especially hen, HAS BEEN THOUGHT THAT OPPOSING THE ELITE MEANS THE END OF LIFE AS YOU NEW IT. You could point your finger and say that rather 15 years in prison for a russian protester than a single innocent dead. If enough protesters would join, laws can be overturned and so on.

Not gonna happen.

Not unless somehow the Russians (and I mean the Russian people, not the governing bodies. Russians and Russian elite, the government, should not be put together) are encouraged with the fact that individuals of the world wants to cooperate with them, instead of believing the state propaganda.

That said. As Mr. Medvedev, Rublev and Ms(?) Sabalenka has my sympathies for the occupational hump regarding Wimbledon. Lets put things into perspective: They are still alive, while the country they are representing in the eyes of the world is STILL building killing fields.

I’m not any one of the aforementioned, but if I where, I’d sit this one out and use the time to message five fellow Russians a day about news sites you still can read and maybe an honest own perspective of what the citizens of the world really think about Russians and Russian government respectively.

April 26th, 2022 at 4:25 pm

Citizens of the world “think” what they are trained to “think” by mass media. Mass media is controlled centrally by people who have a globalist agenda.

This is slowly changing as more and more people wake up.

April 26th, 2022 at 7:15 pm

What bothers me is that the Neocons maneuvered the senile Biden into signing a new US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership Nov 10, 2021.

**That foolish document started the path to war. Which the neocons wanted. The document convinced Zelenskyy, the other Jewish Oligarchs and the supporting Nationalists and Nazis that the US would help Ukraine conquer Crimea, and keep the Russian populated Donbass. Worse, it said that NATO was “the decision the sovereign people of Ukraine had a right to make without any foreign power objecting.**

Under Biden’s Head Rutabaga’s signature, it gave Zelenskyy cause to shred the Minsk Accords that France and Germany had negotiated to stop the war.

But then the American Neocons yanked the carpet once the war started. They would not be starting WWIII on behalf of the Oligarchs. Nuland, Blinken, Hillary and others always were more into punishing and bleeding Russia than helping Ukraine. The neocons saw rampant corruption in Ukraine and their bribing US officials as a problem they were unable to fix despite installing the Ukraine Government after the CIA helped Maidan Coup.

For tennis, I wish they could keep politics out, but unfortunately, the stinking leftists latched on to sports as a means of sanctioning nations. S Africa and then Jimmy Carter’s boycott of athletes over the Afghanistan invasion.
To the present and the embarrassing BLM act of “oppressed” millionaire black athletes, with violence threatened against non-BLM athletes unless they went along with it.

I think the public in many countries know who the Elites of the New World Order are, and are sick of being manipulated and pushed around by them.

April 26th, 2022 at 9:06 pm

In case anyone is curious on why so many are saying the US instigated this war, a link to the US-Ukraine Strategic Charter is here:

https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/

And time to find any of the essays that track relations from the Holodomor, many Ukrainians going with the German Nazis in WWII, the aftermath, the US CIA initiated Maidan Revolution, the move by Ukraine to become the most corrupt nation in Europe, bribing leaders like Biden, Merkel’s deputy – to the war.

April 26th, 2022 at 9:16 pm

Chrisford1, there hasn’t been any significant progress on diplomatic negoatiations and I’m guessing Zelensky is under orders that things should stay that way.

NATO will keep drip feeding arms to Ukraine, just enough to drag things out but not enough to make any decisive changes. The object of course is for Russia’s military resources to be depleted.

This could be to lower the chances of Russia going further West or it could be setting things up to invade and push Russia back further East.

In either case, NATO and the USA (same thing really) don’t want a quick conclusion, they want this to drag out. Additionally it means more arms sales and of course the necessary under-the-table payments to politicians.

One thing they won’t do is give Putin no choice. If they give him no choice then things can escalate to everyone’s detriment.

p.s. you never hear in the media about Minsk2 and how the agreements were broken by the West.

April 26th, 2022 at 9:29 pm

Chico says:

”it is about a bunch of liers who because of a culture of cheating and macchiavelli’ism can’t make their country work regardless of the vast natural resources they have. So they have to steal.”

Seldom have I read such absolute drivel. Your take on this conflict is bizarre.

You would need to spend some time reading into geopolitics and history to understand this conflict. Judging by the fact that one headline can send you over the edge, you clearly are to emotional to grasp a complex issue like Ukraine/Russia/Nato Conflict.

Still, good luck.

April 26th, 2022 at 10:15 pm

@ John

The thought crossed my mind that you are writing from a Russian troll factory ;)

I would be very, very interested to hear some argumenting other than “absolute drivel”. That headline was the tip of the iceberg.
Any links, topics or headlines you would recommend? Geopolitics and history is quite a broad subject.

Not that it needs to mean anything but have you ever eg. talked to a Russian by a table of salted cucumbers, smetana and over cheap Russian champagne? How much have you read into Russian foreign policy and military tactics of the last 200 years? Or the ideology behind Moscow Patriarch Kirill? (Google Suggestion: Church Kirill, you could add Homophobia in there too)

It is little like marriage, if it works, no one comes in between.
You can argue Nato strategies all you want, but without the mess in Russia there would be no strategizing. Just global economics, and the energy and effort could be put into decorrupting that.

True, probably at this point any means go, but in the end it is about containing what has shown to be something that you can’t trust. Russian foreign policy. Who in their rightful mind would argue that European leaders are such idiots that they would promote INVADING Russia?

And the thought about the solution beeing actually establishing a communication link between western PEOPLE and the russian PEOPLE, as a stepping stone for solving the situation for good? Also drivel? That though would require the common westerner to get involved.
Where is my playstation?

April 27th, 2022 at 6:18 am

The Strategic Charter!
US is now promising Finland to reclaim Karelia from Russia. After 77 years of peace, will Finland go for it?
Idiots.

April 27th, 2022 at 12:35 pm

@ Django

Wow. Another Russian troll who wants to write big bad Nato on the wall?

Just as the US told instantly that no Nato aircraft will be entering Ukrainian airspace to hold a no fly zone, I’m pretty sure the communication goes in the other direction in order to prevent a WWW III. IF Nato would think up of something equivalent of throwing dynamite in the fire, it would be the Finnish officials who in first hand would tell them no. But they don’t need to as nothing as idiotic as that would be in the works.

There is no one threatening Russia or the Russian people, people just want to do business, maybe tour the Kremlin galleries. As tourists. Faberge eggs are pretty nice after all.

April 28th, 2022 at 4:39 am

Regarding facts:

https://www.eureporter.co/world/human-rights-category/2022/04/23/russia-patriarch-kirill-should-be-prosecuted-by-the-icc-according-to-a-ngo-report/

April 28th, 2022 at 4:52 am

@chico

Do you think everyone that disagrees with you is a Russian troll?

A sad world you must live in.

I didn’t answer you because what you wrote reads like something a child would write. More incoherent drivel.

Maybe we should ”establish” a communication link between the west and all those kids starving in Yemen? Will we all hold hands and have a happy ending?

You mention homophobia. You do know that most Christian denomination view homosexual acts as sinful?

Is this supposed to be news?

I don’t believe you know anything about Russian foreign policy. There are many American political strategists who predicted that if they (Americans/Nato)continued to meddle in Ukraine the events which are unfolding would occur.

” IF Nato would think up of something equivalent of throwing dynamite in the fire”

Billions worth of arms supplies and training – in a war they simply can’t win, thereby delaying an end to the war and costing more lives.

That’s not adding fuel to the fire?

I wouldn’t see the point in having a discussion with someone who in my opinion knows so little about the subject. Linking some western funded NGO article as facts just proves this. I will not indulge you further, though I will leave you with a quote.

Good luck.

Warning Against the Search for “Monsters to Destroy,”
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. John Quincy Adams- July 4, 1824

April 28th, 2022 at 1:30 pm

Everyone is a Russian troll.
Goodbye Chica

April 29th, 2022 at 11:23 pm

@chico,
Pathetic, uneducated (about the matter) NATO troll chico, you don’t even know that Ukraine as a state (and nation) never existed in this shape and form, do you?!
Where are are you from chico, one of those enslaved EU countries?!

April 30th, 2022 at 4:47 am