Wednesday 30 / October / 2024
Muscat: Omani tennis player Fatma Al Nabhani has walked out of the ITF France 21A tournament in France after accusing match officials of racism.
Al Nabhani walked away midway during her match against Myrtille Georges in the city of Clermont-Ferrand, claiming in social media posts that match officials purposely refused to award her points, openly favouring her opponent.
This, after match officials in the first round match against Elsa Jacquemot deemed her leggings too long and wanted her to remove them before playing. To respect Islamic customs, Nabhani has been playing with leggings her entire life.
In her statement on social media, Nabhani said that she was allowed to play only after they made her "pull it up higher a bit because that 2 inch extra of skin was a big deal for them".
About her second match, which she walked out on, Nabhani wrote that the chair umpire was biased against her, "stealing 5 match points from me and giving me a code violation for complaining, while my opponent should get it for swearing and bad language, and misbehaving".
Nabhani added that the umpire was "having conversation in French in each change over and laughing with the opponent".
The 27-year-old, who is the Gulf region's first female professional tennis player and currently ranked 422 in the world, took to social media to post a tearful video about the manner in which she was poorly treated, in addition to filing a report with the International Tennis Federation and Women's Tennis Association.
"I really don't know from where to start, but in my whole lifetime and my whole time in my career playing tennis, I have never experienced the real meaning of racism as I have experienced it here in Clermont, France," said Al Nabhani, in the video.
"Tennis taught me about sportsmanship, equality, no difference between black and white, no difference between Muslim, Christian or Buddhist or whatsoever, it always taught me equality," she added.
"But what happened here in Clermont, that's not acceptable and all and I just finished writing a report to the ITF and WTA about what happened to me here today."
