Axel Garcian recounts the corruption attempt he was the target of

He is nicknamed “The Maestro”. A man suspected of being the head of one of the largest match-fixing networks in tennis is on trial Friday, March 17 in Belgium. The case concerns 28 defendants and 181 players from many countries. Corruption in tennis is a real scourge and is rife mainly in “Challengers” or “Futures” tournaments, the 2nd and 3rd divisions of the professional circuit.

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Corrupted players are rankless, often anonymous and ranked above 200th in the world. Athletes who find it very difficult to make a living from their profession. Some of them are currently taking part in the “Futures” tournament in Poitiers. Some have the courage to break the law of silence, like Axel Garcian. The 20-year-old Toulouse tennis player, professional since 2020 and ranked 821st in the world, was the victim of an attempted corruption two years ago in a tournament in Monastir in Tunisia.

franceinfo: Have you ever been offered money to fix a match?

Axel Garcian: I’ve been approached for losing a game before via social media. What I did was that I had seen directly with the tournament referee. I showed him the message and he returned to the ITF (the International Tennis Federation, editor’s note). Since then, no, I have never been contacted again for losing a match or “tampering with a match”. Afterwards, it’s more insulting messages, messages from bettors that we receive rather than messages to precisely tamper with the matches.

How much were you offered to lose the match?

It was two or three years ago, but it’s a story of 20,000 euros all the same. It was very, very substantial. But it’s true that when I think about it, 20,000 euros is crazy to lose games, it’s crazy.

20,000 euros is an incredible breath of fresh air. Have you ever asked yourself the question?

No, because it’s against my principles. But it’s true that it’s very tempting and I think most guys who tamper with games, they do it precisely to pursue their careers and their dreams, and not necessarily to make money from it.

“The game traffic, I understand it in the sense that all the players have rent to pay, have a life to lead and it’s very hard. But for my part, I do not tolerate it and I will not accept never that. So I understand, but I don’t tolerate that.”

Axel Garcian

at franceinfo

You say you then received insults on your mobile phone…

These are often insults on my family or on me depending on the score that evolves. Often they insult my family, me, my mother. They are “Go fuck your mother”of the “son of a bitch”. And threats like “We will find you, we will kill you”. I can understand that it touches to receive messages of insults or threats all the time. But stuff like that sucks for me. It’s true that very sensitive people who see that after a defeat can get into their heads.

When you win a match, when you see your opponent who seems to swing or who does not play at his level, do you sometimes say to yourself:“He’s swinging, he’s been corrupted”?

It’s true that sometimes, with all the stories that come out, the slightest guy who swings, we have the impression that he has bet. It’s very subjective and it’s very disturbing. Because the slightest thing, we have the impression now, that with all the stories there are, that he bet and it’s true that there are doubts about everything now.

How to put an end to this scourge?

The distribution of winnings in these ITF tournaments is a big problem in the sense that players like us, we do not receive anything. But I think that many players, in any case, bet on matches or tamper with matches precisely because they have a knife to their throat financially. But I’m sure that if the prize money of our tournaments was higher, if the players had a better quality of life and could live from their passion, even at our level, many of us would not tamper with matches. In my opinion, a lot of people traffic these matches precisely to live, and to live from their passion.