#this is just like insult to injury atp but

[idsb]

I just can’t believe I’ve wanted to be here my entire sentient life and I’ve accomplished it and like. Lol sorry we’re Qantas & we’re incompetent and now u got no clothes1!!1!1!1!1

[butchdykekondraki]

THIS FUCKING FIGHT IS GONNA TAKE ME 10 GOD DAMN YEARS

[kissesforsatoru]

Ok so basically it's not really thirst as it's a general discussion but like imagine if yandere baji and his male darling met bc they threw hands (darling got his shit rocked and then ran up on baji tryna get his lick back (spoiler alert it don't work but he still wants the smoke)

Sooo I'm just thinking about baji basically fucking darling into submission after beating his ass. Adding insult to injury (similar to another ask but I just got ideas from seeing tiktok fights and it devolved from there).

cw: implied/briefly mentioned smut

anon i had to let this one sit in my head for a few days because !!! i love it, this is such a good concept

i can see darling being a lot like takemichi in the sense where he knows he's not all that, but he still gets himself into a shit ton of trouble because he's got a lack of self-preservation and common sense (and really, anyone who challenges baji must be a little bit stupid 'cause boy is on a whole other level of unpredictable, you're asking to get your ass beat atp)

darling sealed his fate when he decided to double back and try again after getting beat the first time. baji can a appreciate a pretty boy, especially a pretty boy who's stubborn, but he's not gonna sit back and let darling try over and over again and fail every single time, so he decides to take a much different route with forcing darling into submission.

baji likes the humiliated look on his darling's face when it sets in for darling that he not only got his ass beat by baji, but he was also forced underneath and fucked by baji too. it's another kind of superiority check for baji, and it's a little bit exhilarating too, which is probably what keeps him interested in darling. and it only spirals from there, i'm sure 💀

[uncriticalbunny]

Sydney not having a love interest at all leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because nearly all women on this show have love interests.

Tina has a husband (or at least had one), Natalie has Pete, Claire is supposed to be carmy‘s great love or whatever, even tiffany has a man after leaving richie and richie himself has been flirting with Jess for 2 seasons now.

To add insult to the injury… we found out that Marcus‘s dad was a deadbeat and that his mom was all alone… like, it this show saying that black women are all alone and unloved??? is that the message because it‘s giving misogynoir.

yes it's giving misogynoir, it's giving blatant desexualization [as @ripley-stark aptly put it]. atp they've made her asexual without explicitly saying it lol.

i've ranted about this before and now i'm just tiredt. i did not expect that they'd treat sydney even worse this season. i've come to terms with the fact that we won't see anyone [much less carmy] be romantically affectionate with sydney. whatever happens next is like. 4 seasons too late thanks. hope my girl has a happy ending ig.

[blessedshortcake]

I think the reason I hated the Shermy and Beth bit because of how Beth kept treating Simon as a little kid. I understand that she didnt believe Simon was actually Simon and not Shermy messing around at first but then later on she accepts it.

But then we have the book scene where she literally says something like "I dont expect you to understand since youre still a kid" and I get that Simon was acting a bit childish with the book but if I was in his place, desperately trying to find my way back from an alternative reality where I am sharing a body with this seemingly random person, id be really upset to be dismissed like that.

I know Simon needed to understand his choices and his focus were wrong and he needs to think about Betty more and accept the way things are now but it feels so bad with the way they handled it 😭

Like we see Simon being miserable at the start and everyone is making it worse (Literally everyone save for maybe one or two people even if its unintentional) and he has a right to be upset about everything that happened to him tbh. It was all messed up.

And then we have Prismo being annoyed with him not cooperating (which i kind of understand but this is about Simon rn) so he moves him along and then with Shermy calling him a kid it feels insult to injury. It feels so unintentionally Bad i can barely put it into words

You show how negatively Simon was affected and how he struggles to cope with the aftermath and then you have someone call him a child. It was an important realisation to have but it was sooooo badly handled. I dont even care about how spoonfed and told not shown it was atp

Idk if i made any sense i am just very bothered about this bit. Thanks for coming to my 4am diary posting

[ikram1909]

am i the only one who thinks the incessant worrying and frankly fearmongering about how gavi will be tossed aside by the coach everytime theres a new development new player whatever is just....insulting atp 😭 like theres one thing to be worried but another to frame it in a way that just undermines him

It's beyond insulting like these people do not believe in him at all. You'd think he's some random bum and not the player whose injury literally ended our season 😭😭 it was like this last summer too, these people never learn or simply don't want to because they're praying on his downfall. I'm sorry but if you don't think so highly of him then what are you doing here? This is literally a space where he's very well loved and appreciated so you have no business being here full offense.

[wsmith215]

An Argentine journalist’s 13-year quest to do right by tennis legend Guillermo Vilas

In 2007, the WTA announced that upon revisiting the rankings data for 1976, Evonne Goolagong — a multiple Grand Slam singles champion who had never reached the No. 1 ranking — should have been in the top spot ahead of Chris Evert for two weeks in 1976, officially altering the record 31 years later.

That was a life-transforming experience, less so for the Australian champion Goolagong than a 51-year-old journalist halfway around the world in Argentina, Eduardo Puppo.

“I took that [Goolagong decision] as a divine sign,” Puppo, now 62, explained in the course of long email exchanges with ESPN.com. “It was no longer time to sit back, but to take up the search.”

So Puppo set out to earn the same retroactive honor for his compatriot Guillermo Vilas, a Hall of Famer who played in eight Grand Slam finals, earning four titles, over an 18-year, record-shattering career that leaves him, along with Rafael Nadal and Bjorn Borg, among a Holy Trinity of clay-court tennis.

2 Related

In the ensuing 13 years, Puppo and his main ally, Romanian mathematician and computer programmer Marian Ciulpan, amassed a formidable body of evidence (some 1,200 pages of documents, and a review of the 23,000 official matches played by the 1,117 pro players who were active at the time) to bolster their claim that Vilas was erroneously denied the No. 1 ranking on two different occasions.

The ATP investigated Puppo’s exhaustive research in 2015 and ultimately declined to act on the claim, without refuting it.

The Puppo team was as “devastated” as, reportedly, Vilas himself. Now 67 years old and living in Monaco in semi-seclusion due partly to health issues, Vilas in recent years has refused to discuss the issue. But last week, speaking to ESPN.com through Puppo, Vilas said: “I made my claims when appropriate, but no one listened to me. At one point I gave up, and that’s why I never spoke again. But years later, Puppo appeared and gave me hope.”

Vilas’ hopes may have been shattered, but not those of his passionate Argentine advocate. Puppo soldiers on. His team now includes a sports lawyer working on getting the case adjudicated in court. (The Puppo team is not seeking any financial award for Vilas or itself.)

The No. 1 ranking has become an obsession for Puppo, and the quest has exacted a toll.

“I am passionate about research,” Puppo wrote. “I knew that tracking No. 1 was a very complex and unpredictable goal, but I never thought it would take 13 years of my life and my family.”

Puppo has put aside weekend outings, missed vacations and strained his relationship with his family seeking redress for Vilas. Courtesy Eduardo Puppo

Puppo explained that he “put aside weekend outings,” missed annual vacations and “narrowed” his relationship with his wife and three children. His family understood that the quest is part of his job (this is a man who spent 22 years writing a three-volume, 2,800-word history of tennis in Argentina) and accepted that seeking redress for Vilas gradually became an “emotional goal” too important for Puppo to forgo.

According to Argentine journalist Sebastian Fest, it was Vilas himself who first suggested that he had been robbed of his rightful place among former No. 1 players in an interview with Fest at the French Open in 2007.

Puppo, a passionate tennis fan and somewhat accomplished recreational player, first met Vilas as a rookie journalist in 1980 and, over the years, interviewed him many times. He described his relationship with Vilas in those early years as an appropriately formal one. “We were journalist and player, nothing more,” he said, adding that he didn’t even discuss his project with its subject for many years.

Fest, who recently served as the president of the International Tennis Writers’ Association, told ESPN.com that while Vilas is grateful and enthusiastic about Puppo’s efforts, their relationship has largely been professional.

The role of sports heroes like Vilas in Argentina helps explain why Puppo vanished down the rabbit hole. Argentines take fierce pride in their national heroes. It frustrates and stings many that while Vilas never officially held the top ranking, other, perhaps less deserving, men from rival South American nations did: Gustavo Kuerten from Brazil and Chile’s Marcelo Rios. To add insult to injury, Rios reached No. 1 without even having won a single major singles title.

“It is a topic that has the potential to interest the whole country,” Fest said. “If Vilas is given No. 1 in those times in 1975 or 1976, there will be no other topic that day that can match it. Front page of all the newspapers and congratulations from the president.”

Vilas remains an important national figure in Argentina. Nicknamed “Young Bull of the Pampas” for his strength and endurance (Vilas was flattered when he was described as “masochistic”), Vilas is also a poet and brooding, philosophical iconoclast.

In 2012, Puppo hired an artist to create a life-sized iron sculpture of Vilas, pictured, hitting his renowned one-handed topspin backhand. Courtesy Eduardo Puppo

In 2012, five years into his research, Puppo decided to honor Vilas. Puppo, who has also worked in various administrative and promotional capacities in tennis, hired an artist to create a life-sized iron sculpture of Vilas hitting his money shot, the renowned one-handed topspin backhand. The statue was ultimately installed at the entrance to the Mar del Plata Nautical Club in Buenos Aires, where Vilas got his start in tennis.

The following year, Puppo shared the full details of his effort with Vilas, who in 2014 asked Puppo to be his biographer. According to Puppo, the two met at Vilas’ home 96 times to conduct interviews and research a book that is 600 pages long and counting.

“I continue to perfect [it] today,” Puppo said. “It is Guillermo’s story and a summary of all the research into the rankings matter. All this brought Guillermo closer to me.”

To a skeptic, it may sound like Puppo was bewitched by the power of Vilas’ personality and celebrity. But the body of evidence compiled by Puppo’s team is convincing, and Fest confirmed that he is taken seriously and admired by many. “He [Puppo] is not a groupie at all, he’s a professional. He has a passion for tennis and the conviction that when it comes to Vilas, there is a case there.”

Puppo’s argument is a compelling one. He says his research shows Vilas was unjustly denied the opportunity to eclipse No. 1 Jimmy Connors in the rankings in two specific periods (five weeks beginning on Sept. 22, 1975, and the first two weeks of 1976) because the ATP did not publish rankings in the weeks when Vilas was on top, times that Puppo characterizes as “blank weeks.”

During that dawn of the computer era, the ATP published rankings sporadically (just 11 times in 1974 and 13 times in 1975). It was partly because the rankings, based on a player’s average performances, were seen mainly as a guide for entry and seeding in tournaments, and partly because the ATP simply lacked resources.

“People played with the rankings a lot then, because it was based on an average of a player’s performances,” Jose Higueras, a two-time French Open semifinalist and rival of Vilas, told ESPN.com. “Jimmy [Connors] and Bjorn [Borg] knew how to keep their rankings high. If you played smaller events, your ranking could only go down. There were times when I knew I could win a $75,000 tournament and my ranking would go still down, not up.”

In 1977, Vilas won 16 titles, including the French Open, yet he was denied the No. 1 ranking by both the computer and most expert panels. Daniel SIMON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

The gap between Sept. 16 and Oct. 29 was unusually long, lasting 43 days. That’s the time frame during which, according to Puppo, Vilas would have first been ranked No. 1. But as no rankings were published, Connors retained the honor.

Given the purpose of the rankings, there was really no talk about the top guy until the very end of the year, when a number of experts and panels weighed in with their own, subjectively generated, year-end rankings — much like the NCAA once crowned its No. 1 football team by vote.

An even more striking anomaly occurred later, in 1977, when Vilas put together one of the greatest years ever yet was denied both by the computer and most of the year-end “expert panels.”

In 1977, Vilas won 16 titles (by contrast, Roger Federer won 12 in his most prolific year, 2006) and amassed a record 53-match clay-court winning streak that has since been eclipsed only by Nadal.

Vilas won major titles at the French and US Opens that year, and he was runner-up at the Australian Open. Yet Connors still ended up on top in the final rankings issued by the ATP despite failing at the majors and losing to Vilas both times they played in 1977, including in the US Open final. His record of 69-11 with eight titles pales in comparison to Vilas’, but the ranking system still worked in Connors’ favor.

Puppo’s research uncovered numerous errors and omissions in the official ATP record. Vilas, who had complained bitterly about being denied access to the official ATP records for that year, felt vindicated. Based on Puppo’s investigations, the ATP retroactively gave Vilas credit for three clay-court titles (bringing his career total to 49; only Nadal has won more) that were originally misidentified by surface.

But that was about as far as the ATP was willing to go after a comprehensive 2015 review of Puppo’s research. Chris Kermode, then the ATP’s chief executive, made the call to ignore Puppo’s work, admitting that while mistakes existed in the “official” record, awarding Vilas the top ranking retroactively would be too disruptive. Kermode warned that it would create a chain reaction of claims and challengers to the various records.

“It’s a huge deal for a player, so we haven’t done this or taken this lightly at all,” Kermode, himself a former pro player, told The New York Times after dismissing Puppo’s claims in 2015. “But at some point, that’s the call we have to make. … Rewriting history is impossible.”

Puppo, who said he was “deeply saddened” at the time of the ATP’s decision, still believes its response was “insufficient,” given the scope of his research, and emphasized that the ATP has never been able to refute his work yet does not want to face the truth.

Puppo responded to a conciliatory email from Kermode, writing: “No, we are not rewriting the story, that is impossible. The story is unique. We are writing the missing part of the story. The full story. Otherwise it is better not to tell it, because it is lying to those who starred in it.”

Many still remain uncomfortable with the idea of giving a player something seemingly earned in the past by another player.

Higueras believes Vilas was certainly the top player in 1977 and would like to see that recognized. “But,” he said, “I would never change the rankings, even if the data is incorrect. Then Connors could come back, saying he would have played more if he knew. … It becomes difficult.”

So Puppo’s quest continues. His once dark, long hair has turned into a wild nest of silver and white curls. At times, he sports a beard worthy of a department-store Santa. The rewards for his efforts have been scarce. Leaving for Monaco in 2016, Vilas entrusted all of his sports material for Puppo to curate as he wished.

“I always trusted Puppo and his team; they are professionals and meticulous like me,” Vilas said. “I feel [supported]. Eduardo became a brother to me. My family and I love him and we are grateful for everything he does in a selfless way.”

Puppo is proud that he has earned Vilas’ trust, but it rankles him that he can’t be the warden of an even more valuable possession: the No. 1 ranking that he believes Vilas earned but never really got.

Source link

The post An Argentine journalist’s 13-year quest to do right by tennis legend Guillermo Vilas appeared first on The Bleak Report.

from WordPress https://bleakreport.com/an-argentine-journalists-13-year-quest-to-do-right-by-tennis-legend-guillermo-vilas/

[marilynngmesalo]

Whistleblower feels hung out to dry for exposing tennis match-fixing

Whistleblower feels hung out to dry for exposing tennis match-fixing Whistleblower feels hung out to dry for exposing tennis match-fixing https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

ORDINO, Andorra — As a brave whistleblower, Marco Trungelliti should be feeling good about himself. The Argentine player exposed match-fixing crooks in tennis, helped the fight against the criminal gambling syndicates that are corroding his sport from within and testified about dishonest fellow professionals who, in part thanks to his evidence, are now banned.

But instead, the 29-year-old says doing the right thing cost him dearly. Ranked No. 139, he’s one of the few players so established in the sport willing to speak frankly about the fixers who pay athletes to lose so they can profit from bets on the crooked results. The price of Trungelliti’s honesty has been rejection by other players and stress that hurt his health and his game.

Compounding his unhappiness, Trungelliti also feels he’s been left out to dry by tennis administrators and their anti-corruption investigators. Having pumped him for evidence, he says they failed to publicly defend him against those in tennis who muddied his name, questioned his motives for giving evidence and labeled him a rat.

“They just used me,” he says. “They just dropped me in the middle of the sea.”

“It was a disaster, disaster. In my opinion, it was one of the worst procedures that I have ever seen,” he adds. “I’m still paying the price.”

Trungelliti caused a sensation at the French Open last year when he, his younger brother, mother and 88-year-old grandmother squeezed into a rental car and dashed 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Spain to Roland Garros so he could fill a “lucky loser” spot at the Grand Slam tournament that opened at the last minute when injured players withdrew.

What few knew at the time was that behind his easy smile, thick curls and feel-good 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 first-round victory against Australian Bernard Tomic, Trungelliti was shouldering a weighty secret: He’d been a key witness in a match-fixing probe that snared three fellow Argentines, testifying even though he knew that, back in Argentina, he’d likely face a backlash for doing so.

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "uLo1B3UsAFo", "pn_video_375601", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

Best-known of the three was Nicolas Kicker, at No. 84, the highest-ranked player convicted so far of fixing matches. The Tennis Integrity Unit, the sport’s anti-corruption body with 17 full-time staffers, an annual budget of nearly $5 million and veteran ex-police investigators, announced Kicker’s guilt just three days before the French Open, where he had been preparing to play. Neither the TIU nor Trungelliti gave even the slightest hint at the time of the role he’d played.

In the aftermath, however, Trungelliti noticed player attitudes changing toward him. Even some he regarded as friends asked why he didn’t keep his mouth shut.

“No one was saying ‘Hi’ any more. No one was looking at me,” he says. “It’s sad.”

Contacted by The Associated Press, the TIU said it couldn’t comment because of its “long-standing confidentiality policy with regard to disciplinary hearings and witness evidence.”

Behind the scenes, Trungelliti has repeatedly contacted the unit, asking without success for it to defend him.

“Due to my participation in the trial, I receive all kinds of insults from players to managers,” he emailed the TIU last August. “They are trying soil my honour.”

Trungelliti’s wife, Nadir, says there were times when the stress reduced him to tears. When he was playing, he just wanted to be home. He smashed rackets. A back injury flared again.

But he’s not shutting up.

Trungelliti says match-fixing is an open secret in the game and getting worse.

//<![CDATA[ ( function() { pnLoadVideo( "videos", "2B8y31zXsfE", "pn_video_737388", "", "", {"controls":1,"autoplay":0,"is_mobile":""} ); } )(); //]]>

“It’s not just the players’ problem,” he says. “There are a lot of coaches involved. A lot. A lot. More than we think.”

“If you are weak mentally, then you go in, you are all in, for sure, because it’s easy money,” he says. “If you think about it, this is like one hour working for one hundred thousand dollars.”

The evidence bears him out.

An investigation commissioned by tennis administrators concluded last December that betting-related corruption is “particularly acute and pervasive” at lower- and mid-level Futures and Challenger tournaments, below the top-tier ATP tour.

Gambling syndicates often target players who, unlike the sport’s multi-millionaire stars, struggle to make a good living. In Belgium, prosecutors say they identified 137 mostly lower-level players , from more than a half-dozen countries, suspected of having worked with an Armenian-led gang rolled up last June that allegedly paid 500 to 3,000 euros ($570 to $3,400) for fixed matches and sets. Police say the syndicate employed mules, people hired for a few dollars to place bets small enough to slip under the radar of gambling watchdogs. Two other match-fixing operations were broken up in Spain , in June and October.

Trungelliti says he felt compelled to come forward when he was approached in July 2015 by a fixer who posed as a potential sponsor and was introduced via his coach. He wrote to the TIU, saying the fixer “asked me to keep quiet.”

“But I can’t because I hate this,” he wrote. “Can you please tell me what I can do? I have his name, his telephone number and a few things he told me.”

Those “things” proved explosive.

In a subsequent hour-long interview with a TIU investigator and in a four-page witness statement, Trungelliti meticulously detailed what he knew. He said the fixer laid out a sliding scale of bribes: $2,000 to $3,000 for fixed Futures matches; $5,000 to $10,000 in mid-level Challenger tournaments; $50,000 to $100,000 on the ATP tour where the biggest stars play.

The fixer said he paid cash and communicated using encrypted, easily deleted text messages. He reeled off players he said he’d fixed matches with. Three leapt out at Trungelliti, all Argentines: Kicker, Patricio Heras and Federico Coria.

The fixer was particularly “proud” of a Challenger match fixed in Italy with Kicker, Trungelliti told the TIU. Kicker lost 6-1, 6-2 in 63 minutes to South Korea’s Duckhee Lee, then ranked 74 spots below Kicker, at No. 278.

Kicker is now serving a three-year ban, with the possibility of an additional three-year suspension hanging over him if he breaches anti-corruption rules again.

Heras, whose career-best ranking was No. 269 in 2013, also is banned for three years, with an additional two years suspended .

Coria was banned for two months, with another six months suspended, for failing to report that he was offered money in July 2015 to lose a set at a Futures tournament in Italy and for not telling the TIU of another approach a month later to lose several matches. The TIU specified that Coria hadn’t actually taken money or fixed games. But the TIU investigator who questioned Coria testified there was evidence in his iPhone of contacts with the fixer who also sought to groom Trungelliti.

Whether the fixer is still operating is unclear. The TIU hasn’t announced any sanctions against the fixer or said whether it shared Trungelliti’s testimony about him with police.

As painful as the whistleblowing process has been for Trungelliti, he says he’d go through it again if he had to. He says he reported a separate approach by another fixer in 2016.

His TIU witness statement neatly summed up his thinking.

“I love tennis,” he testified. “I feel very saddened by the state of tennis and the fact that match-fixing is happening so often.”

  Click for update news Bangla news http://bit.ly/2GsXpuT world news