Oct 10 (Reuters) \u2013 The United Nations Human Rights office has condemned online racist abuse faced by Coco Gauff after a replayed point sparked a backlash against the American tennis \u200bplayer this week.<\/p>\n
Gauff was targeted after stopping play during \u200ca crucial point in her win over Sun Xinran at the China Open, raising her hand to complain about a flickering advertising board as Sun was about to hit a winner.<\/p>\n
The umpire ordered the point to be replayed \u200cafter \u200ba video review, and Gauff went on \u2060to win the match 7-5 \u20606-1, but the American later revealed in a social media post that she had received a huge amount of racist abuse following the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can dislike me or disagree about what \u200bhappened without being racist,\u201d Gauff, who is Black, said on X in reply to a post containing a racial slur.<\/p>\n
The official \u2060UN Human Rights office posted a \u2060statement on Saturday calling for players, coaches and sports \u200bbodies to unite against racial and sexist abuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cRacist messages such as \u200bthose targeting tennis player Coco Gauff online are appalling and \u200cillustrate that Black female athletes are specifically targeted for vitriol and racial abuse,\u201d it wrote on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no place in sport for racial or sexist slurs and abuse. Players, coaches, and sports \u2060bodies need to stand up for those facing such attacks and fans need to push back against those who sully sport with racism and \u2060sexism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reuters has contacted \u200cthe WTA, the governing body of women\u2019s tennis, \u2060and tournament organisers in Beijing for comment.<\/p>\n
Twice\u00a0 Grand \u200bSlam \u200cwinner Gauff exited the tournament on Wednesday with \u200ba round-of-16 \u2060loss, and said the incident had left her drained.<\/p>\n
A study by the WTA and World Tennis showed players were subjected to over 12,000 abusive posts and messages on social media in 2025, up from 8,000 posts the previous year.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Chiranjit Ojha in Purulia, India, editing \u200bby Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct 10 (Reuters) \u2013 The United Nations Human Rights office has condemned online racist abuse faced by Coco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-923135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}