Beyond the feats and disappointments that marked this year 2021, the world of sport will also have been crossed by broader debates and controversies.
The world selected three.
In the wake of the Peng Shuai affair, the deterioration of relations with China
Never had a sports organization dared to challenge China head-on. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the body that manages the interests of the women’s circuit, through its president, Steve Simon, announced the 1is December “The immediate suspension of all WTA tournaments in China, including in Hong Kong”, in support of Peng Shuai.
On November 2, the former duplicate world number 1 accused a former deputy prime minister of rape in a message – immediately censored – published on the Chinese social network Weibo, before disappearing for nearly three weeks. The 35-year-old reappeared in a Beijing restaurant, during a tennis tournament in the Chinese capital and in a video call with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), without convincing the WTA of her freedom to communicate.
A few weeks before the Beijing Winter Games (from February 4 to 20), the controversy could not be worse for its organizers. Did the player’s fate act as a catalyst? In any case, the affair came to blow on the embers of Sino-American relations. For months, the threat of a diplomatic boycott of the event had simmered in the face of the human rights situation in the country, in particular that of the Uighur Muslim minority.
On December 6, the ax fell: the White House officially announced that it would not send official representatives during the high mass of snow and ice sports to denounce “China’s atrocities in Xinjiang”. Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have decided to join the process, provoking the ire of Beijing, for whom this meeting symbolizes its status as a world power.
The word is freed on burnout among athletes
Roland-Garros 2021 was not yet officially launched that a psychodrama was agitating the Porte d’Auteuil. On May 27, the Japanese Naomi Osaka announced her refusal to participate in press conferences, a media obligation for all players, in order to “Preserve your sanity”. Quickly overwhelmed by the controversy, the world number 2 decides to withdraw from the tournament after her first round, admitting to having crossed “Long periods of depression” since 2018.
Two months later, she reappears in mondovision to light the cauldron of the Tokyo Olympics. Alas, caught up with the challenge at home, she left the competition in tears, eliminated in the round of 16.
Games where another megastar lifts the veil on this taboo subject in sport. On July 27, to everyone’s surprise, Simone Biles left the Ariake gymnastics center in Tokyo, in the middle of the team all-around competition. “I don’t trust myself so much anymore, Justifies the 24-year-old American, whose team will glean the silver medal. (…) I have the impression that I do not take so much pleasure anymore. (…) I need to do what’s right for me and focus on my sanity. “
Considered “the greatest gymnast of all time”, Biles concentrated all the hopes of her country and attracted the eyes of the whole world. She finally left with a bronze medal on beam, a week after her untimely exit.
This salutary speech – the magazine Time named her “athlete of the year” – could lead the world of sport to take better account of the psychological disorders of athletes. In recent years, swimmer Michael Phelps and swimmer Missy Franklin, cyclist Tom Dumoulin or NBA basketball player Kevin Love have also publicly mentioned this invisible evil.
Vaccination against Covid-19 divides athletes
“I am not vaccinated and the trip to Australia was not an option for me. “ On December 12, Pierre-Hugues Herbert became the first tennis player to give up the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year 2022. While the world is still strongly affected by the Covid-19, the State of Victoria, where the event takes place, has required the players, their entourage and members of their management to bring up-to-date proof of vaccination .
“It’s a personal choice. It is sure that it brings worries and complications in my job ”, then argued the French to Latest News from Alsace. At that date, the list of participants was still conditional, the uncertainty weighing in particular on the presence of the world number 1, Novak Djokovic.
Professional sport has not been spared by the debate on vaccination. In an environment where the body is a working tool, there are many reservations. And the Serb, in fact, was one of the main spokespersons. “We should have the freedom to choose, to decide what we want to do”, he again struck on the sidelines of the Masters in Turin (Italy), in November.
Often on the move and in regular contact with strangers, athletes are a prime target for the spread of Covid-19. Faced with this observation, the National Basketball Association (NBA), for example, tried to convince all the players to be vaccinated. But when the season resumed, in October, there were about twenty refractories left.
The league has therefore decided to impose a strict protocol on them: daily tests on training, match and travel days, obligation to stay at home on match days at home or at the hotel during away matches, ban on going to indoor meeting places … If they are contact cases, these players must observe a seven-day isolation, where the vaccinated are not subject to any. Under local regulations, unvaccinated New York and California franchise players can no longer play at home, resulting in significant financial losses.
If team sports have high vaccination rates – in Ligue 1, more than 90% of footballers at PSG, 100% at OM… – reluctance is greater in the context of individual disciplines. Thus, China, which will host the Winter Olympics from February 4 to 20, will impose a quarantine of twenty-one days on those of the some 2,900 athletes expected on its soil who would not have, on their arrival in the country , a complete vaccination schedule.
