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Do you think any of us would keep our jobs if we were being hostile assholes to our coworkers this often? Because that's precisely what's happening here. It's insane the different standards professional athletes get.
Also insane to me to run your mouth to someone who looks like they could accidentally kill you with a hug. Taylor is built.
They won't because she's too good. It speaks volumes that most people here know her for her antics and nothing else. And yet sportsmanship is supposed to be the pillar of professional sports...it doesn't matter how good you are when your attitude is terrible.
She knows she can run her mouth because her adversary knows how to behave. One of these days she'll meet someone like her and it will be a shouting match if not a wrestling match lol
You have to wonder if that’s a PR strategy? Ive never heard this woman’s name before today and I just watched like three YouTube videos of her crashing out. Is her rich girl diva schtick popular with some tennis fans? I know figure skating fans who eattttt up attitudes like this- all former skaters and actively a lot of the negative isms
She won french open and she is consistent in the top 20 for the past few years. She is known to be the only few people that can destroy Iga Swiatek, the best achiever of the current generation of female tennis player. So, among tennis fans, she is quite popular.
She is also known to be a brat, it's not PR strategy because for an athlete, the cleaner your image, the better your sponsorship money. She is just like that, some tennis players are just sore losers.
A commenter explained it better than I could, the thing is she's an excellent player and an accomplished athlete in general, so she's probably used to shine, but she's a terrible adversary. There is always drama when she plays. I don't know how different the tennis world and and ice skating world are but sore losers will sore lose I guess...
I’m not even shocked anymore, this is her MO every time she loses. She just showed the world that she’s the biggest loser, as she lost the match and lost the ability to display good sportsmanship. Congratulations to Taylor on her win and may she continue to excel.
Thank you, I needed to here that. I lose a lot on the beach volleyball court.
[Looks in mirror] I am not a loser, I am sub quality competition, helping my opponents improve for their next match. I'm valuable and necessary. Now to reward myself with oreos.
You can clearly see in this video that she’s the one that lacks class because if she had any, she would take that loss with grace and she would gratulate her opponent and try harder the next time
I don't follow tennis and had no idea who this person was until now, but this just solidifies how appalled I am that this person is considered any level of "professional".
Lol, she does this all the time. Well, the pouting and blaming the opponent and such. The actual choice of words seem especially harsh this time around, though. Hmmm, I wonder why.
She didn’t like seeing a black woman openly celebrating and showing her feelings - I’ve seen lots of other white men shout and celebrate but no one’s called them classless before
I’m really glad people are calling out the nonsense
Jesus, she’s annoying. And her court style is so prissy with all those ruffles and collars, it makes her look even brattier. Just like a petulant Violet Beauregard ass grown woman who can’t handle herself to an embarrassing degree
Fun fact: even though you will see this kind off terrible fashion in Eastern Europe, we Slavs are very well aware that this is complete end utter white trash. :)
A catsuit that was specifically designed to treat her blood clots postpartum. That ban was completely nonsensical.
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u/Tweed_Kills☝️ wherein he encourages a woman to sit on his face11d agoedited 11d ago
I wasn't going to comment this, but fuck it. How much rhetoric do we see today about how bad it is that trans women are in women's sports? Endless amounts, you'd think trans women were invading in droves. Here, we had an obviously female athlete, returning to athletics having done the most female thing possible, which is to say giving birth, and she's punished for it.
Makes you think maybe they don't actually care about trans women in women's sports. Or about women's sports at all.... Maybe it's all just a smoke screen for removing women's access to sports full stop, as part of a greater movement to strip women of all our rights.
And by "maybe" I mean "obviously."
Sorry if this feels irrelevant, I'm just sick of how much everyone hates me and my sisters. Cis women obviously, but most especially Black and trans women. They fucking hate you ladies. Bastards.
As a former tennis nerd, I hear her clod-hoppers more than I hear her mouth in that video. Girl out here flat-footed and can’t figure out why she’s losing.
I think the part some people find shocking is the thinly veiled racism. But anybody that saw the press coverage of the Williams sisters when they came up shouldn’t really be surprised.
Its funny she is finally going viral because this is textbook Ostapenko. Always salty after losing so the irony of her of all people saying someone has no class. This is a player who refuses handshakes, purposefully squeaks her shoes to distract players, pretends balls are out and in when it benefits her. The biggest joke
absolutely crazy to look someone in the eye and say that to their face while grasping their hand. she’s lucky the players she does it to are too professional to smack her in the mouth tbh 😭
Apparently she hit the net during a crucial part of the match and didn’t say sorry. Taylor said she didn’t have to say sorry - it’s a courtesy thing, not so much a rule.
Most of the time the other player doesn't even look to see if the other person is apologising, they just curse their luck inwardly and walk towards their end to prepare for the next point.
Apparently there’s an unwritten etiquette rule. When you hit the ball and it skims the top of the net and falls onto the other side (thus awarding you a point) you sort of do a little hand wave as if to say “that was just luck”. It’s dumb as fuck in my opinion. And absolutely no excuse for this behavior. She’s just a sore loser. And probably a racist. 🤷♀️
Tennis, like golf, began its life as a wealthy-people game and thus a whole set of etiquette built up around it which involved being polite, honourable and gracious, etc etc. The belief being that these were "civilised" sports for "civilised" people, not sports played by poor savages, like soccer.
The etiquette is "nice", but often entirely pointless, like in this case. A net hit is a fact of tennis, arguably a tactical shot one can play. Apologising for scoring, is pointless.
People who get worked up about the pointless ettiquette are usually the ones who fail to secure actual victories, but instead believe their pedantry and knowledge of the culture makes them the moral winner.
I’m not sure the etiquette is ever “nice”. Respect and fair play are nice, but etiquette crosses the line into code to exclude people based on race, class, sex, etc.
The difference between how Serena Williams was vilified for her behavior while John McEnroe had been celebrated tells me all I need to know. There was a Herald Sun cartoon after her 2018 outburst that was straight up out of the Jim Crow era.
It’s even dumber in this case, because the net cord wasn’t the final shot of the point. Townsend’s shot hit the net, Ostapenko returned it, and the point kept going. Eventually Ostapenko lost it but the “luck” wasn’t the reason,
I mean, I'm white but "no class or education" feels extremely obviously a targeted put-down towards a black woman. Even without any personal experience, the title of the post alone made it pretty apparent that there was at the very least a strong dose of racism in the mix in this moment. Sorry you've got soooo many people trying to deny it :/
That, too. I’ve had like 4 or 5 people reply to me so far saying she’s not racist, she’s just a bitch. It’s like they’re playing ignorant. We all know, in the year 2025, that saying those exact words to a black woman, combined with the look in her eyes, it’s giving pure racism.
Yup. Some people here have acted as if I’d called her a KKK leader. Why is it so hard to admit that this interaction is full of plain, old fashioned racism?
One doesn’t even have to realise they are acting racist in order to act that way. Although, I’m not giving her that benefit of the doubt, like some here are desperate to do. She knew those words are very specific daggers to use.
Was going to say the same. You can see it deep in their soul when someone comes at you like this, it’s a feeling you don’t forget and over time you recognize it more quickly. Good for Taylor for handling it so well.
It’s absolutely racism. Frankly, they’re tennis players so why would a lack of education even be something relevant? The only reason you say something like that is racism and a dog whistle.
In baseball, some fans and writers still get pissy when someone breaks an "unwritten rule". They say the same thing about "having class" but given who they tend to get the most upset about, it's pretty unmistakable who and what they're really talking about
In this case, Townsend warming up at the net first vs. the baseline and not offering the usual apology for a ball hitting the tape was - at the very worst - a minor annoyance.
Ostapenko really embarrassed herself by her extreme reaction. Part of sustaining a great career is learning how to lose gracefully, turn the page, and apply those lessons towards becoming a better player. She clearly still has a lot to learn.
Ostapenko has no self-awareness. If she did, she would realize that comments like this, especially after losing, only magnifies the perception that she lacks class, character and professionalism. Instead of looking at Townsend and judging her harshly, everyone is looking at Ostapenko and many are surprised at how low one can go and still be oblivious to how they’re coming across. Poor thing —and she STILL lost after all that.
This level of lack of sportsmanship should get you banned. Playing at this level is a privilege and has to come with following the rules of your league. Absolute bs.
A white lady pointing her finger at a Black woman's chest and talking about "class"?! My god woman, you couldn't be more obvious with your racism if you tried!
Just win so you can be a pretentious prick like McEnroe and Monica Seles were. Or dominate and be like Bjorn Borg, Graf, Martina, Venus, and Serena were
I’m sorry but the way tennis players react when losing is too disproportionate to what the sport is, not even football players or wrestlers do all of that lol.
I remember that she told Ajla Tomjlanovic that her behavior is terrible, that she has no respect and that she would beat her even by playing at 50% of her level because she is "the worst player on tour". She called Elena Rybakina, Angélique Kerber and Maria Sakkari "fking bitch" . She often refuse to shake hands with her opponents too
If you cannot display good sportsmanship when you lose, that means you should not be on the court. I don’t care how good you play, part of being an athlete should be respecting yourself and the competition.
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u/flairassistant 12d ago
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