‘Nobody would feel comfortable’ – Daniil Medvedev weighs in on Peng Shuai situation
World number two Daniil Medvedev has added his voice to the ongoing Peng Shuai sexual assault censorship controversy after the WTA withdraw events from China.
The WTA have withdrawn all scheduled tournaments from China following their failure and refusal to cooperate with the WTA’s requests for a “full, fair and transparent investigation” into Peng Shuai’s sexual assault claims.
On November 2nd, French Open and Wimbledon doubles champion Peng Shuai accused former Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of coercing her into a sexual relationship, but was then not seen or heard from publicly for the next few weeks.
Multiple high-profile names have shared their concerns for Peng including 20-time Grand Slam champions Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, as well as former WTA players Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. Medvedev has now added his voice to the global outpouring of support.
Medvedev hopes Peng is safe and well, but was reluctant to comment on the ATP’s failure to copy the WTA’s tournament withdraw from China. This is due to the situation being early in its development and the ATP’s next scheduled event set to take place in China is in Autumn of 2022.
“Right now what we have is a person missing and that’s not nice. Hopefully the issue can be solved because we can never know what’s going to happen.
“That’s why I don’t want to comment this early because, yeah, if the tournament would be next week, probably nobody would feel comfortable [playing].
Medvedev also referenced the point that tennis, as well as other sports, are played in countries that have various other problems, saying “again, a lot of countries have different issues, yet we play in most of them [for] tennis tournaments.”
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