Extracts from the Daily Telegraph website (one of the few newspaper sites that the control freaks at work will allow me to access.. grrr!)


"The Championships retain their capacity for soap opera. Maria Sharapova described the sight of a male streaker cartwheeling across Centre Court as the "most bizarre thing" she had seen in her career. The Centre Court crowds also laughed at the Russian's grunts during the tournament. And Nalbandian screamed at the Court 13 crowds in Spanish, which translated as: "You f******* English whores." Charming.

And then there is Russian Dmitry Tursunov, probably the funniest man on tour, who said of umpire Fergus Murphy: "The guy's an idiot. Just because he's been umpiring for many years doesn't mean he's been doing a good job. Saddam Hussein has been in Iraq for a while, but not many agree with his point of view.""

:o :o

Foul mouthed Nalby!! I'm surprised that he hasn't been taken to task over that one.. I'm indifferent to him at the best of times, but has gone WAY down in my estimation now. :angry: His interview after the FO semi was poor form too. Bitter??? You bet he was..

And Dmitry seriously threw his toys out of his pram after that match, didn't he! Boy, does he have a way with words.. :devil:

Just as an appendum to my slightly miffed posting, the one thing that also intrigued me about it was that it felt like a courtside blog, and I thought that there hadn't been much of that going on during the tournament, or at least nothing that I had seen.

Anyone find anything ike this? I didn't see any players' blogs on the ATP site over the last couple of weeks..

On a more positive note to my OP, I read in another paper (The Times' Neil Harman I think) that Kim Clijsters had sent a text to pass on to Amelie after Saturday's match, quoted as follows:

'Give her a big hug from me, and say there could be no greater or nicer winner of the championship'

Amelie was apparently called over to study the text, and it made her eyes well up for the umpteenth time..

Such a popular victor!! :ok:

Hey thanks fo rthis petalp :)

Tursunov - bloody hilarious he is! Love it even if ti is contraversial he has hit th enail bang on the head there! roflmao

Nalbandian - is that TRUE? :o How dare he call the crowd English Whores? :angry: What the hell did they do? H eshoudl have been done for that, I notice a lot of players who cruse in a laguage other than the native one get coudl be gettign away with murder at times. Well I am disgusted with him fo rthat laguage. It's oen thign to have a go at th eumpire or just be annoyed about your game and swear, but to insult the crowd is unofrgivable. Not amused with him now. Perhaps he shoudl have tried playign soem tennsi instead of doing Jack s then he woudl nto have got so annoyed. roflmao

Is Nalby related to materazzi?

Get over it sam! roflmao

Looks like it doesn;t it? what a bunch of foul mouthed pigs! What is the Latino fixation with the word whore? Horrid isn;t it.

Yes whore is a particulary vicious word. If i was there, i'd just call him one back! roflmao

Hello SB! :D

I know.. I was speechless when I read this too!! Here is where I found this little news item..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtm...11/sttalk11.xml

And you know what bugs me?? If Tim Henman, Andy Murray had said something like that to the French crowd, the following things spring to mind:

More people here would have been watching this game in this country, including journalists.
It would therefore certainly be covered in the papers, and be pretty big news!
(I'm assuming for argument's sake in this example that the crowd at RG have as little English as the SW19 crowd have Spanish) :)

I wonder if the Argentine press covered it at all?? Or did the all-encompassing behemoth that is football result in this being a small 'temper tantrum' snippet, 6 pages from the back page in their papers? Burying bad news, as it were?

I'm thinking that had I been watching it there, and had an Argentinian friend translating for me, I think that I would have said something to someone about it. Ah well, that's what playing a crap match and prioritising his football team must do for him then.

Well, of course not everything printed in a paper is necessarily true, and I'm not a regular Telegraph reader, but I'd think that this would not be the sort of thing that they would make up for the fun of it. Plus everything else in this section of news snippets seem highly feasible, so why not this one too?

Maybe it was directed at the line judges and umpire (if English?). If it is true (which I'm inclined to think that it is), then it is disgraceful, any which way you slice it. There's no way that he should be allowed to get away with behaviour like that, and I agree, I bet that other players have got away with similar things in the past.
:angry:

Oh, I had initially planned to post this on the beeb site. It wouldn't let me, due to the offensive language, no matter how many dashes or asterisks I put into key words..!

And yes, Dmitry is a bit of a star! I enjoyed his other pearls of wisdom on the beeb site too.. Not sure if it had as much exposure as his ATP blog, but here it is, in case you missed it :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/5134312.stm

I don't want to defend Nalbandian, but would point out that it is awfully tricky translating something like that. The point is what impact would the Spanish have on Spanish-speakers. Would it sound as insulting to them as the translated version does to us? Well, whichever which way, Nalby has gone down in my estimation - and I always liked the man :(

Hi Scolios! :D

Good point about things possibly getting lost in translation..:)

I have dug around a little more about this, having brought this up in the first place!

Apparenty Nalby had already been starting to lose his temper, and had been fined for racquet abuse in his first set with Verdasco. In one instance, he had to replace his racquet, having broken it when he threw it. It's more the Marat Safin-style stuff, rather than the Nieminen-style 'accidentally throwing my racquet over the wall'!

The whole match seemed to be bad-tempered, with Verdasco also being warned for racquet abuse too..

It seems that Nalby's verbal outburst was in response to the crowd cheering on Verdasco...

This kind of makes the whole thing seem much more feasible.. unfortunately. I was hoping that it would be untrue (as it's never nice to hear these sort of things :( ), and that it would indeed be lost in translation.

And all of this after he had requested for an early start to his match (to enable him to watch Argentina) and for the officials to grant him that request too. Hmm.

Ok, it's an isolated moment.. but there's a BIG difference between calling someone a whore (bad in itself) and an 'English Whore'. That definitely reveals an unpleasant prejudice, and runs much deeper than just a bad-tempered outburst.

It has been airbrushed in the main as a 'fiery, bad tempered encounter' in many of the reports that I read, with reference to an 'outburst'.. Here's an example, but it still doesn't make for great reading..

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2641-2251484.html

Crikey! I've actually never seen Nalbandian lose his temper - I obviously haven't seen enough of his matches... And did Nieminen of all people "accidentally throw his racquet over the wall" (I like it!) - he has always struck me as the epitome of gentlemanly restraint. Well, altogether black mark to Nalbandian. Thanks for the various articles, petalp!

Hello! Yes, the Nieminen incident was very funny, especially as he had intended to smash his racquet on the ground, initially.

However, he was most of the way through this process (it was either a violent swing of the racquet in general or a swing towards the floor?) when the racquet slipped out of his hand, and off it went, over the the wall!

He then had to wade through the crowd, go to the other side of the wall, where there was a crowd of people. He must have said something along the lines of: 'Had anyone seen my racquet round here?'. He was very apologetic (i.e. in line with your thoughts of him being a gent), and it was clear that he was checking that no-one got hurt as a result of this.

His face when his racquet went over the wall was a picture though..:)

http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/interv...1955434375.html

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...SPGMCJON2I1.DTL


Interesting that this was the Tursunov match too (I'd forgotten this!).

So would I, and I would put the word Argentine in frint of it just to be specific like he was! Then again, might call him something worse! roflmao

Thanx Petalp, I doubt vey much the telegraph woudl publish that without foundation or they could be sued for libel! And yes Tursy's blog is really funny! :D

OMG why di dhe bother to turn up? Isnt; it sickening when you think of the great players knocked otu early in Fed's draw who wodl have killed to eb in Nalby's position - he had a good draw. perhaps in future he shodul nto bother to turn up to wimbers and bugger off home and play footie instead.

I used to like Nalby, not any more !