Tournament organizer: “Kostyuk started receiving threats, refused to play”

One of the organizers of the French exhibition tournament Negomental Open de Bourg-de-Peague Xavier Coffin He described in detail the situation with Marta Kostyuk’s refusal to play in the match against Russian Mirra Andreeva.

“On Thursday, Donna Vekic announced her withdrawal from the tournament due to shoulder pain. We had to urgently look for a replacement. We received many rejections. Martha responded in the affirmative.

We said she would probably play against Russian tennis player Mirra Andreeva. Kostyuk said everything was fine, but she would not shake his hand as has been customary at WTA tournaments for the past few months. This suited us.

Saturday evening: Mirra Andreeva beat Varvara Gracheva and advanced to the final. From that moment the news spread throughout Ukraine (6 years ago we could not even imagine that our small tournament would be talked about so far from our borders). Marta found herself under great pressure online.

Sunday morning: Martha arrives in Bourg-de-Page. He was going to play with some kids from the club before the game in the afternoon. Then she gave us this news. She didn’t feel ready to play after the threats she received online.

Naturally we were disappointed because we knew it would be very difficult to replace him 3 hours before the match started (Gracheva had already caught her train). We are working to find players, but it is very difficult in such a short time.

In a hurry and in agreement with Andreeva, and also considering our people, to whom we definitely want to offer 2 matches, we decided to organize a match with Yannis Ghazouani Duran (No. 1 of the club and N88 of France). He lost to Arthur Rinderknech on Friday (6:7, 3:6).

Martha spent the morning with our youth, taking photos, signing autographs, etc. passed. She was simply very professional. He didn’t ask for anything from us, he apologized. She said she just wanted to calm down and, above all, stop receiving threats on the internet.

Leaving Bourg-de-Page. Ghazouani Duran defeated Mirra Andreeva. The Russian woman still lifts the trophy (by the way, the director broke the finalist’s trophy the same morning). “All’s well that ends well, and no one here holds a grudge against the Ukrainian,” Coffin said.