Svitolina says online abusers after Canadian Open defeat were angry gamblers
The 10th seed from Ukraine crashed to a 6-2 6-2 quarter-final loss against four-times Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka at the Montreal WTA tournament and later highlighted the abuse directed at her and her family.
Tennis players, like many athletes, often have to deal with the wrath of gamblers online despite the efforts of authorities to tackle the issue with measures that include the blocking of social media accounts.
"To all the bettors: I'm a mom before I'm an athlete," Svitolina, 30, wrote in an Instagram story in which she attached screenshots of the messages that included death threats.
"The way you talk to women - to mothers - is SHAMEFUL. If your moms saw your messages, they'd be disgusted."
Some of the abusive messages Svitolina shared referenced the ongoing war in her country following Russia's invasion.
A study undertaken by some of the various governing bodies of tennis said that angry gamblers were responsible for nearly half of all the abuse that was directed at players on social media last year.
Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia said after her loss at last year's U.S. Open that "unhealthy betting" was one of the top reasons players were targeted and took aim at social media platforms for not doing enough to filter the abuse.
She had said that it hurt players, especially after tough losses when they were "emotionally destroyed" and she worried about how younger players would be affected.
Reuters has contacted the WTA for comment and details of their latest efforts to combat the issue.
Svitolina's husband and fellow professional Gael Monfils had humorously hit back at gamblers after an early loss in Stuttgart this year, with the 38-year-old saying he was surprised people still put money on him to win against much younger opponents.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity buried in Kyiv
Viktoriia Roshchyna, the Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity last year, has been buried in Kyiv, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her singular professional courage and the importance of her work. Roshchyna was reporting on Russia's systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine, before falling victim to this herself. She died at the age of 27 last year in murky circumstances, after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing. On Friday, an Orthodox church service at the golden-domed St Michael's Cathedral in central Kyiv was followed by speeches on Maidan, the city's central square. Mourners included Roshchyna's editors and journalistic colleagues, diplomats, MPs and members of the public who came to pay their respects. She was later buried at the Baikove cemetery. Colleagues described Roshchyna as a passionate and driven journalist, who pursued her work with such an intensity that she was often difficult to manage. She refused to take no for an answer and insisted she had to see the situation in occupied territory for herself. Editors, reluctant to accept the risks of her self-commissioned assignments, also knew that her work was shining a unique light on one of the darkest and hardest-to-access aspects of Russia's war. 'She is the bravest person, the bravest journalist, I have ever met in my life. That's not an exaggeration, it's a fact,' said Sevgil Musayeva, the editor in chief of Ukrainska Pravda, one of the outlets for which Roshchyna wrote, in a speech on Maidan. 'Once she started something, she never quit,' said the Ukrainian journalist Angelina Kariakina, who worked with Roshchyna at the Hromadske news website. 'If she started a case, a story, we editors never had to remind her that something was happening further in the story. She simply never abandoned her characters or her stories.' Roshchyna was taken captive briefly in Russian-controlled territory in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion in spring 2022, but was subsequently released. However, she continued to travel to occupied areas to bring back stories of life under Russian control, and was taken captive again in August 2023. 'Viktoriia was a person who didn't know the word 'no'. Everyone explained that she shouldn't go to occupied territory. No editors were ready to take responsibility for this, but she still understood that this was her mission, and did it,' said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an MP and the head of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on freedom of speech. 'She was genuine, and genuine people often burn with intensity, and with that fire they ignite everyone around them, but very often this passion costs them the most precious thing – their health and their life,' he added. Roshchyna's death in captivity was investigated by the Viktoriia Project, a consortium including the Guardian, Ukrainska Pravda and other reporting partners, earlier this year. For months after her disappearance, there was no news of Roshchyna, who was held, like many Ukrainian detainees, without contact with the outside world. It was only in May 2024 that Russian authorities admitted, in a letter to her father, that she was being held in captivity. Roshchyna was last seen alive on 8 September 2024, and there were rumours she was due to be included in a prisoner exchange. Ukrainian investigators are still working to establish exactly where and how she died. Sources close to the official Ukrainian investigation disclosed to the Viktoriia Project that examination of Roshchyna's body after its repatriation earlier this year showed the hyoid bone in her neck was broken, damage which can occur during strangulation. The body was also returned with the brain, eyes and larynx removed. Roshchyna was posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom by President Zelenskyy earlier this month. She received it 'for her unwavering belief that freedom will overcome everything,' Zelenskyy wrote on X. Roshchyna spent nearly nine months imprisoned at pre-trial detention centre number 2 in the city of Taganrog, which was repurposed as a holding centre for Ukrainian detainees and has been identified as one of the worst places for torture and mistreatment. Earlier this week, Ukraine's national police service and its chief war crimes prosecutor announced that Aleksandr Shtoda, the head of the facility, had been formally placed under investigation. At the funeral, Roshchyna's editors vowed to continue investigating the circumstances of her death and the specific people who were responsible. 'Our task is not to leave the theme of the occupied territories, however hard it is,' said Kariakina. 'The best way to remember her is not just with words and memories of the work she already did, but to continue this work.'
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Russia ‘running slave catalogue of Ukrainian children to adopt'
An adoption database featuring Ukrainian children sorted by descriptors such as eye and hair colour has been set up in Russian-occupied Ukraine, according to an NGO. The database, hosted on the education department's website in Russian-controlled Luhansk, is said to feature profiles of almost 300 orphans. Users can search children by age, eye and hair colour, gender, health and even personality description. Mykola Kuleba, the head of Save Ukraine, denounced the platform as a 'slave catalogue' and described the practice as 'digital trafficking'. He wrote on X: 'These children are not 'war orphans'. They had names, families and Ukrainian citizenship. 'Many lost their parents to shelling. Others were forcibly taken and re-registered with new documents. Now, they're being matched with Russian families, treated like animals in a pet adoption database.' The site lists children as 'orphans' or 'left without parental care,' but Save Ukraine said that they were Ukrainian and had been forcibly re-registered under Russian documents. The portal is managed by Luhansk's so-called Ministry of Education and Science, part of the Kremlin-installed administration in a region internationally recognised as Ukrainian territory. The self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, or LPR, was declared in April 2014. Pro‑Russian forces, aligned with Russia, seized control over parts of the region shortly afterwards. Kuleba said: 'This is not adoption. This is not care. This is digital child trafficking, masked as bureaucracy.' Ukrainian children have previously been found listed on government-linked Russian adoption sites with altered names and ages obscuring their origins. Save Ukraine, which has returned almost 700 children from Russia, estimated that tens of thousands of Ukrainian minors had been forcibly transferred by Russian authorities since the full-scale invasion in 2022, many of whom remain missing. Yale researchers have verified the scale and severity of these estimations, which UN experts and legal groups have characterised as potential war crimes. In 2023 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for President Putin and the Russian children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, citing evidence of forced deportations and illegal adoption of Ukrainian children. • Russia 'sending kidnapped Ukrainian children to front line' In images purported to be stills from the website the children featured are ten, meaning that they were born after the area was seized and became the LPR. However, Kuleba said that most of the children in the catalogue had already been born before the occupation and held Ukrainian citizenship. Russia has defended the transfer of children from occupied areas as a humanitarian act, but Kyiv has called for urgent international action and accused Russia of using adoption as a weapon of war.
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Ukraine buries reporter who died in Russian captivity, urges release of others
KYIV, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity last year, was buried in Kyiv on Friday, while her colleagues called for international pressure to secure the release of other Ukrainian reporters held by Moscow. Several hundred people gathered in the centre of Kyiv for a solemn ceremony to pay tribute to Roshchyna, 27, whose first-hand reporting provided a rare glimpse into life under occupation in the early months of Russia's invasion. "It is very sad... it is really about losing a professional who was braver than any of us," Nataliya Gumenyuk, a journalist, told Reuters. "We pay tribute while there are still other Ukrainian reporters behind bars, and with what has happened to her, it is our duty not to stop." Roshchyna went missing in August 2023 during a reporting trip to Russia-held eastern Ukraine. She died after a year in detention. The body of the journalist was discovered among bodies that Russia handed over to Ukraine earlier this year. Ukrainian forensic experts were unable to determine the cause of death, but found signs of injuries and possible torture, Ukrainian prosecutors have said. Moscow did not comment on Friday, but has previously denied allegations of torture. Ukraine's National Union of Journalists said that it had verified a list of at least 30 Ukrainian reporters who were in detention in Russia. Several of Roshchyna's colleagues who attended the funeral said that more political and international pressure on Moscow was required to help release the reporters. Ukraine and Russia regularly exchange prisoners of war, and several large swaps took place after Kyiv and Moscow met for three rounds of talks in the Turkish capital Istanbul. The exchanges typically include servicemen from both sides but not civilians.
