Paraguayan tennis player Daniel Vallejo, 22, ranked 71st in the world, made headlines when he said that his match "should have been refereed by a man", instead of a woman, because "it's very demanding and you need a lot of strength". Days after his sexist comments, he has been fined 65,000 euros by Roland Garros, which is about half of his prize money from the tournament.
Vallejo lost in a five-set epic match on Thursday May 28 to 17-year-old French player Moïse Kouamé (the match ended in a super tie-break ended 8-10), and the crowds were, naturally, crazy about their local player, who went on to lose in the following round but made a huge impact as a potential new star (the youngest player since 1991 to win a main-draw match in the French Open). Vallejo complained that the chair umpire Ana Carvalho did little to control the crowds, who cheered for too long between points.
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"This sort of match needs to be umpired by a man; it's very difficult for a woman to do it", Vallejo said in an interview with CLAY. "It has to be refereed by a man, because it's a very demanding crowd and you need a lot of strength to go against the crowd".
After the backlash, Vallejo posted a tweet that was later deleted as it did little to fix things. "I never spoke about women in general, I spoke about the referee specifically, who didn't handle the crowd at any point during the match. That said, I also didn't say that I lost because of her. I congratulated the opponent and it's normal for the crowd to cheer for the home player."
On Monday, the tournament director Amélie Mauresmo, confirmed that the French Tennis Federation has fined Vallejo around 65,000 euros, which is nearly half of what he earned after reaching the second round of the tournament, 130,000 euros. "As far as we're concerned, the situation is very clear: this kind of remark is unacceptable. Neither for the tournament nor for the Federation".