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Jelena Ostapenko breaks silence on Taylor Townsend 'no class, no education' jibe: 'She came out and straightaway...'
Jelena Ostapenko was involved in a big spat with Taylor Townsend following her US Open loss, with both sides continuing to throw jabs after the match.
It has been a dramatic and heated start to this year’s US Open championships: after the remarkable scenes between Benjamin Bonzi and Daniil Medvedev on the men’s half of the tournament, a loud verbal spat escalated into a big on-court fight between Latvian 25-seed Jelena Ostapenko and American player Taylor Townsend in their second round contest on Wednesday.
After Townsend had eliminated Ostapenko from the tournament with an emphatic 7-5 6-1 victory, things turned ugly as the pair swapped words at the net during the handshake. The tensions boiled over as they began an argument, only ended by Townsend walking away to celebrate her win – and subsequently inciting the home crowd by pointing towards her opponent and trying to rile up her supporters.
On her on-court interview after the match, world number one doubles player Townsend revealed the reason for her reaction: "She told me I have no education, no class, and to see what happens if we play each other outside of the US. I said, I'm excited, bring it on."
However, Ostapenko of Latvia was quick to fire back in her own defence. She took to social media to explain her perspective in a series of stories, explaining that she felt slighted by a show of unsportsmanlike conduct by her opponent.
“Today after the match I told my opponent that she was very disrespectful as she had a net ball in a very deciding moment and didn’t say sorry, but her answer was she doesn’t have to say sorry at all…” wrote 2017 French Open champion Ostapenko. “There are some rules in tennis which most of the players follow and it was the first time ever that this happened to me on tour.”
A hand of apology or acknowledgement of good fortune is expected when a player sees a ball striking the let cord go in their favour, understood to be within the spirit of the game. Ostapenko also went on to state that Townsend took advantage of her home advantage with regard to the crowd.
“If she plays in her homeland it doesn’t mean that she can behave and do whatever she wants,” wrote Ostapenko, before going on to explain that even their on-court warm-up was atypical and ‘very disrespectful and against the rules of a tennis match’.
Ostapenko accused of racial edge to comments
Townsend took the altercation in stride, also stating that there would be ‘no beef’ between the two players, and that she didn’t take Ostapenko’s words personally. When asked if she believed there was a racial element to the choice of words made by her opponent, Townsend was the first to admit she didn’t interpret it along those lines: "I didn't take it in that way. But also that has been a stigma in our community of being not educated, and all of the things, when it's the furthest thing from the truth. Whether it had racial undertones or not, that's something she can speak on."
Ostapenko would later respond to this as well, vehemently stating on Instagram: “I was NEVER racist in my life and I respect all nations of people in the world, for me it doesn’t matter where you come from… Unfortunately for me coming from such a small country I don’t have that huge support and a chance to play in homeland.”
Townsend proceeds to round three after the dust settles, and will have a tough contest against fifth seed Mirra Andreeva to look forward to when she returns to court.
