Naomi Osaka strongly came to the defense of American tennis player Taylor Townsend on Thursday, who claimed that Jelena Ostapenko hurled “no class” and “no education” insults at her following their second-round match the previous day.
Osaka, whose father is Haitian-American and mother is Japanese, said following her second-round victory over Hailey Baptiste that such derogatory comments are “one of the worst things you can say to a black tennis player in a majority white sport.”
Ostapenko, who is from Latvia, has denied that she was making any racial comments when she used those terms during the heated post-match exchange over what she believed was a breach of tennis etiquette by Townsend.
“I saw that part obviously. It’s been on the TV, like, every 15 minutes. I mean, it’s really difficult to say,” Osaka said when asked about the incident following her 6-3, 6-1 victory over Baptiste at Louis Armstrong Stadium. “Granted, I know Taylor and I know how hard she’s worked and I know how smart she is, so that’s the furthest thing from uneducated or anything like that.
“But if you’re, like, genuinely asking me the history of Ostapenko, I don’t think that’s the craziest thing she’s said, if I’m being honest. I think it’s ill timing and the worst person you could have ever said it to. And I don’t know if she knows the history of it in America. But I know she’s never gonna say that ever again in her life. But I mean, it was just terrible. That’s just really bad.”