Andy Murray shifted focus back to the Ukranian side in a talk with Tennis Majors explaining that helping the country and its players should be the most important thing.
The topic around the war in Ukraine in the latest months mainly revolved around whether Wimbledon will lift the ban on players from Russia and Belarus. They officially did some time ago and Murray admitted that he knew the decision was coming sooner than the rest.
I knew kind of ahead of time that that was sort of how it was going. I think what’s really important is to continue to talk about what’s actually happening in Ukraine just now, not focusing on a few tennis players and a few athletes who may or may not be able to play major sporting events.
Murray understands the position of Wimbledon as there is great sympathy towards Ukraine in the UK. The Brit himself aided several charity efforts since the country was invaded and he thinks the importance of it all was lost in all of this. Murray called for more help towards the Ukranian side.
It’s a difficult decision for Wimbledon. Obviously the rest of the sport had gone in a completely different direction to them, which made it very hard. But I don’t think this should be so much about that decision. I think it is distracting a little bit from actually what is taking place. You don’t want that to happen. You want the actual issue to be at the forefront of all of these discussions.
Murray is one of the rare players that actually spoke out publicly about this issue with many players not using their platforms to speak about it. Iga Swiatek was one of those that championed the cause of Ukraine many times and Murray is of a similar opinion. He understands the difficulty of Ukranian players because they too are colleagues, not just the Russians.
Obviously, I have sympathy for the Ukrainian players. I’ve seen that some of the female players (notably Elena Svitolina and Marta Kostyuk) have spoken out about how difficult they found it and maybe felt like they could have had more support as well through that. You need to understand their perspective as well, and not just the players that weren’t allowed to play last year. There are Ukrainian players on the tour whose families and everything (are affected) and they’re going through unbelievably difficult times as well. And that’s what’s important.
0 Comments