The Italian immediately went out in the qualifiers in Stockholm and was overwhelmed by threats: “Corrupt”. And he denounces everything on Instagram
Happens. You lose a match that perhaps in other conditions you wouldn’t have lost, you leave the field where you gave everything anyway and you also find yourself threatened with death, insulted, mocked and offended by complete strangers, bettors who lost money because of that result and not they managed to “close” the bill, and maybe they think you did it on purpose, to lose. Summary of a slice of life of a professional tennis player: it’s not the first time, it won’t be the last.
This time, however, the professional tennis player in question, that is Andrea Vavassori, a 27-year-old from Turin, number 147 in the world, did not accept in silence, and reacted: he took a screen shot of the insults received on social media and a story on Instagram, where he denounced what happened . I’ll step back. Andrea flew to Sweden immediately after his exit in the quarter-finals of the Malaga Challenger on Friday 13 October, defeated by his compatriot Mattia Bellucci 6-3 7-5. The following day, less than 24 hours later, he took to the field in Stockholm to try to qualify for the main draw of the ATP 250 by challenging the world number 189, the Lebanese Benjamin Hassan, the underdog both in terms of ranking and in betting odds. . An opponent that a fresh and rested Vavassori would probably have beaten, but this was not the case, given the journey, the adaptation to the pitch and balls, and the natural tiredness. Result? Andrea emerged defeated from the battle against the Lebanese, after a very long match (6-7 (5) 7-6 (5) 7-6 (5) the score for Hassan), which lasted three hours and with three match points in the third and final set.
THE INSULTS
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Open up heaven. Tremendous insults on social media from furious people who accused him, in no uncertain terms, of having sold the game. “You need to break your legs”, “Die in hell, you corrupt gambler”, “I’d like to meet you at the bar to teach you a lesson”, some of the “kind” messages. At this point Andrea took a screenshot of the messages and in turn made a story on Instagram: “I arrived at 4 in the morning from Malaga, I tested the conditions here in Stockholm just 30 minutes before the match – explained the Turin player -. I played a fantastic match against a really good tennis player who in the end played fantastic under pressure: 3 match points and a hard-fought match until the end. This is what I deserve. Thank you.” “I wrote those things to raise awareness of a theme, that of betting, on the insults that we have to suffer almost every day when we lose or when we win – Vavassori tells us -. I am not against betting but I don’t understand why send messages and threats against players who make this sport their job and one’s life, trying to give the best every day, with one’s limits and difficulties. In Stockholm I gave my best, and I burst out precisely because I thought I didn’t deserve these insults.” Vavassori continues by analyzing the very hot moment on the betting front, not only in tennis: “Without a doubt it is an increasingly widespread phenomenon, even in our sport, and I have noticed that social media in particular have made it possible to no longer have any type of filter. We are at everyone’s mercy. Frustrated people feel empowered to send messages, insults, real threats, and the higher someone climbs in the rankings, the more likely it is that they will send you messages of this type, because perhaps more money will be made on that match. In Paris, when I lost in the second round, the same thing happened on social media. The last thing you should do is insult a player when he loses, and instead it has almost become a rule.”
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