Second racket of the world Belarusian Arina Sobolenko admitted that she and her family received death threats after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine. The tennis player even noted that she was thinking about ending her career.
Arina has been under pressure for a long timeThe world tennis star, who this year can become the first racket, is being persecuted no less than her colleagues from Russia. Sobolenko is the favorite of almost any tournament, she is always given increased attention. Only sometimes the interest is unhealthy.
At Roland Garros, Arina had to deal with attacks from Ukrainian tennis players and even a journalist. The latter tortured the athlete at a press conference with questions about politics and attitudes towards President Alexander Lukashenko.
Beloruska even had to cancel open conversations with the media in order not to finally fall into a psychological hole. Add to this the regular scandals associated with the refusal of Ukrainian women to shake hands with Arina. The same Elina Svitolina openly ignored Sobolenko after the defeat.
“I can’t deal with this anymore” In the episode of the Break Point series, Sobolenko told a lot of terrible details. Unfortunately, all this has little to do with sports. And some things are just scary.
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«They started saying:» You should remove the players from Russia and Belarus. I thought everyone was looking at me weird, you know? I felt hated because of my country. Opened social media after the match and the first thing that popped up was something like «You're fucking gonna die» or «You're better off dead, wish your whole family died of cancer and blah blah blah.» I saw these messages and felt like I couldn't handle it anymore. This is too much,” said the second racket of the world.
It is also noted that following the conversation, Sobolenko burst into tears and began to communicate with the team in Russian. Among other things, there was a phrase that she no longer wants to play tennis. That is, the star was brought to such a level.
Ukrainian tennis player Lesya Tsurenko also spoke about the tough conflict between her coach and Sobolenko for the same political reasons. Awareness of the reasons for Arina's emotional statement comes.
At Wimbledon, the situation will probably worsen. British journalists will not miss the opportunity to ask the Belarusian woman all their questions. 90 percent of them will not be about tennis.
They all cannot forgive her for the fact that in 2020 she signed a letter in support of Lukashenka. And the fact that this has nothing to do with sports does not interest the British. The more valuable will be Sobolenko's success at Wimbledon. For her, this should be an additional motivation.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors