The player Elina Svitolina recently spoke about the intense wave of hatred that she received on social networks after the defeat against Naomi Osaka in the quarterfinals of Canadian Open.
SVITOLINA has published these messages through screenshots on Instagram. Besides the words aimed at her, some racist comments also targeted her husband – African French tennis player Gael Monfils.
Before that wave of hatred, Elina Svitolina reacted strongly: “Send to all the betting: I am a mother before being a athlete. The way you speak to women, to mothers is ashamed. If your mother sees those messages, they will definitely feel disgusting.”
SVITOLINA's incident is not separate. Earlier, at the beginning of the year, British player Katie Boulter also revealed that she received life -threatening threats to herself and her family during the competition at Roland Garros. Boulter said she believed that most of them came from betting losers and had considered athletes insulting a “normal” thing.
At the same time, WTA and ITF published the first season report on the situation of social networks aimed at women's players. The report recorded 458 tennis players targeted with more than 8,000 comments and hateful posts in 2024, of which 40% came from “angry gamblers”.
Not only tennis, the situation of sports athletes attacked online is becoming more and more popular. Last month, two AFL (Australian Football League (Australian Federation), Jase Burgoyne and Nasiah Wanganeen -Milera also publicly disclosed racist messages they received, causing clubs and tournaments to take part in the culprit.
Cases such as Svitolina or Boulter once again raised the alarm bell about the increasing toxicity of social networks in professional sports, especially as athletes became the target of losers and unreasonable hatred.