Marta Kostyuk once again refused to shake hands with her rival from Russia and didn't even wanted to stand next to Varvara Gracheva during the awarding of the WTA 250 tournament in America. The Ukrainian has clearly played politics and is running into sanctions.
Kostyuk has been behaving this way for a long time. It so happened that representatives of Russia and Ukraine met in the final of a major tournament in Austin. 22-year-old Gracheva made it to the decisive match in the United States, where 20-year-old Kostyuk became her rival. Marta is now the second racket of Ukraine and will soon break into the top 40 of the world ranking. However, she was remembered primarily not for this, but for her endless criticism of Russia and its athletes.
Both Russian and Belarusian tennis players suffered from her behavior last year. The ex-first racket of the world Belarusian Victoria Azarenka was excluded from the charitable tournament «Tennis for Peace» due to the protest of Ukrainian athletes, headed by Kostyuk. In the end, the organizers had no choice but to remove Azarenka so as not to anger the Ukrainians.
Kostyuk and Azarenka later met on the court at the 2022 US Open. Victoria destroyed Marta on the court, and after the end of the match went to the net to shake hands with her opponent, but instead the Ukrainian slipped her racket and defiantly turned away. In doing so, she broke elementary tennis etiquette that had existed for decades. After that, Kostyuk stated several times that she was horrified due to the fact that Russian and Belarusian tennis players do not express their position on what is happening in the world.
She refused photographs and gave out a Russophobic speech. And in 2023, Marta was again forced to play with a representative of a country she hated. Gracheva in the final gave the fight to Kostyuk, but still lost in two games with a score of 3:6, 5:7. During the match itself, there were no excesses, but at the end of it, the Ukrainian completely ignored the Russian. It was like she wasn't on the court at all. She not only did not shake hands with Varvara, but also refused to take a joint photo at the awards ceremony, and in her speech she made a number of Russophobic statements, putting it under the sauce of supporting Ukraine.
The tournament director tried in every possible way to soften the situation and even said that he had I have good friends both in Russia and Ukraine. Did not help. Kostyuk still behaved disrespectfully, although, admittedly, this was more than expected. There is a good chance that Ukrainian tennis players will continue to cross paths with Russians later this season.
Moreover, just the other day it became known that our athletes will most likely be allowed to participate in Wimbledon 2023. This means that the WTA will have to deal with the situation in some way, because such behavior is hardly good for the organization's reputation.