Serious episode at Indian Wells, before the Italian’s debut in the qualifiers: “The tournament and the WTA have increased my confidence, but it’s not right to enter the field feeling in danger”
Insults and threats from bettors on players’ social networks are unfortunately a sad habit, but we have never heard of death threats directly on WhatsApp, on the private number. It happened to Lucrezia Stefanini, a 27-year-old Italian Billie Jean King Cup athlete. The number 138 in the world is in Indian Wells where yesterday she played and lost in the qualifiers of the Californian tournament.
Today, on her Instagram profile she posted a video in which she recounted what happened: “I make this video to denounce what happened to me before the match – said the tennis player, eliminated by Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva in three sets at the opening of the qualifiers -. On my Whatsapp number I received death threats if I hadn’t lost the match. They sent me a photo of a gun, they also wrote the names of my parents, the place where I was born. A very serious thing”. Stefanini immediately reported to the WTA: “They were all very nice, they increased their security towards me, they escorted me to the car and made themselves available to the entire tournament. I can’t think that sport, and tennis, can be ruined by people like that and that I had to go onto the court feeling insecure. This is why I gave everything to play my game to the end and I will continue to do so.”
Not long ago it was Mattia Bellucci who was the victim of bettors with a series of insults and threats, while two years ago Francesco Maestrelli, again with a video on Instagram, told of all the times he had been attacked for a defeat.
