Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who has been missing since early November after accusing a former Chinese leader of forcing her to have sex, has spoken “a huge misunderstanding” Sunday February 6, in an interview granted to the newspaper The Team. “Sexual assault? I never said anyone sexually assaulted me”she said in this interview published on the site of the sports daily. “I never disappeared, everyone could see me”adds the tenniswoman, explaining that she does not “[pensait] not that there would be such concern”. The Team was able to meet the player on Sunday, on the sidelines of the Beijing Olympics. Peng Shuai received the daily’s journalists in a suite on the 16th floor of the hotel where the Chinese Olympic Committee has established its premises.
“My sentimental problems, my private life, should not be involved in sports and politics.”
On November 2, 2021, on her social networks, the tennis player, who was for a time world number 1 in doubles, had accused Zhang Gaoli, former Deputy Prime Minister and former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, of rape. Chinese. His post was quickly deleted. After her accusations, it took two weeks to see her reappear in photos, then in video with Thomas Bach, boss of the IOC. “I have always stayed in close contact with my close friends”assures today the player at The Team.
Asked if she had any problems with the Chinese authorities after her accusatory post, Peng Shuai replied that “feelings, sport and politics are three very distinct things”. According to her, one should not mix sport and politics. “Sport should not be politicized because when it is, most of the time it amounts to turning one’s back on the Olympic spirit and it goes against the will of the world of sport and the sportsmen. ”
Peng Shuai: “My life is as it should be: nothing special”
The tennis player speaks for the first time in an international and independent media since her public reappearance and the whirlwind that accompanied her message of November 2. https://t.co/0mPXJBcY3s pic.twitter.com/rZbRlZxN8a
— THE TEAM (@theteam) February 6, 2022
On January 27, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach announced that he would meet the player during the Beijing Winter Games which began this Saturday, without giving a precise date. In a statement to AFP, an IOC spokesperson said he had been in contact with her on several occasions in January.
Peng Shuai explains today to The Team that his life “is as it should be: nothing special…” Referring to the rest of her career, the tenniswoman assures us that she “[serait] forever a professional tennis player”even if she does not play “not lately”. She announces, in hollow, that she stops her professional career. “It will be very difficult to find my level on the physical level”she pleaded, referring to difficulties with a knee. “My participation in major competitions was already greatly reduced” before the Covid-19 pandemic, she explains.