The Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko announced that he had courted the WTA, believing that the ruling body of female tennis, and in particular his boss at the time, had not supported her enough in the face of his psychological difficulties in 2023, a year after the start of the Russian military invasion.
“Even in my worst nightmares I could not have imagined that the professional circuit, where I considered myself at home, could become a terrifying and foreign place whose director general consciously committed an act of psychological abuse against me, which caused a panic crisis and an inability to do my job”. These strong words are those of the Ukrainian tennis player Lesia Tsurenko, who announced that she had launched a legal action against WTA.
In a message published on social networks on Wednesday, April 16, the former world number 23 refers to its package during Indian Wells 2023 before a match against the Bélarusse Aryna Sabalenka. It was more than a year after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, where Belarus gave support to Russia.
The WTA position had shocked
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, no Russian or Belarusian player has officially supported the military maneuvers of the Kremlin. Some, on the contrary, expressed their disapproval. The fact remains that the Ukrainian players have since refused to shake hands with their opponents of Russian or Bélarusian nationalities.
At the time, Lesia Tsurenko had said: “A few days ago, I had a conversation with the director general of the WTA Steve Simon and I was absolutely shocked by what I heard. He told me that he was against war, but that if Russian or Belarusses played played it, it was their own opinion, and that the opinion of others should not disturb me”.
In August 2024, Steve Simon was replaced at the head of the WTA by a woman, Portia Archer. Contacted, the world body did not immediately comment on these new statements.
“The WTA refused to protect a human being”
Lesia Tsurenko, who considers that it is “time to tell the truth”, explains that it has seized justice “at the end of last year”.
“Pain, fear, panic attacks, humiliation, hidden information, pressure on my team so that I would be silent … And it is not even the exhaustive list of what I have endured,” says the player. “The WTA refused to protect a woman, a player, a human being. Instead, she has chosen to protect a person with power of power,” she accuses.
“Everything I have left to defend myself, to assert my rights, my dignity, and to prevent such acts of violence in sport is to turn to the courts,” she wrote without specifying what court she had seized, neither under what reasons, nor the concrete repairs she expected.
