A spectator of the Cincinnati tournament who carried a Ukrainian flag was reportedly forced out of the stands on Sunday during a match between the two Russian players Anna Kalinskaya and Anastasia Potapova.
Posted at 9:31 p.m.
The story was reported on Twitter by journalist Ben Rothenberg on Monday afternoon. In a series of tweets, Rothenberg explains that one of the two players allegedly complained to the referee about a lady sitting in the stands, who carried a Ukrainian flag on her shoulders.
Said spectator, named Lola, “didn’t say anything, watched the match silently,” he wrote.
The referee allegedly got down from his chair and confronted the lady, telling her that it was “not pleasant” that she brought her flag, to which the spectator replied that it “is not pleasant to invade a country. Recall that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for several months.
The field security officer then allegedly asked the spectator to leave or called the police. “The other spectators sitting alongside her on Court 8 were quick to come to Lola’s defense, saying she was not doing or saying anything wrong. She was only sitting with her flag. They mentioned freedom of speech,” but security was oblivious to it, Rothenberg says.
The spectator would then have left the field. About 20 minutes later, the tournament security boss reportedly came up to him and presented him with a rules document saying his flag was too big. She would then have been escorted to the parking lot, where she would have been offered to store her flag in her vehicle.
Asked by Rothenberg about the incident, the Cincinnati tournament organizers reiterated the rule regarding allowable flag sizes. The WTA, for its part, did not respond to his requests.