French tennis player Michaël Llodra (ranked No. 41 in the world) recently pulled off a Vincent Chin-esque double-whammy of racial insensitivity, after he reportedly screamed "****ing Chinese!" at a Korean-American woman in attendance during his first round match against Ernests Gulbis at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California. He has since taken to his website to apologize in a classically non-apologetic fashion, by qualifying that he is not a racist, and that he lost his temper because the Indian Wells court being uncooperative, and also because tournament organizers scheduled his matches poorly.
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French tennis pro Michaël Llodra apologizes for screaming "F**king Chinese!" during match
French tennis player Michaël Llodra (ranked No. 41 in the world) recently pulled off a Vincent Chin-esque double-whammy of racial insensitivity, after he reportedly screamed "****ing Chinese!" at a Korean-American woman in attendance during his first round match against Ernests Gulbis at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California. He has since taken to his website to apologize in a classically non-apologetic fashion, by qualifying that he is not a racist, and that he lost his temper because the Indian Wells court being uncooperative, and also because tournament organizers scheduled his matches poorly.
Below is the translation of his apology from the Montreal Gazette:
"I’d like to explain myself, regarding the controversy surrounding me and to reaffirm, above all, that I am of course not racist. I have already affirmed and justified that numerous times in the past! Everyone who knows me personally knows this very well.
Sometimes, on a court, when things aren’t going exactly the way I envisioned them, my annoyance leads to my using some very stupid expletives. In this case, the woman in question was quite far from the court, but a small group in the first row decided to make hay with it and report my words - distorting them, on top of that.
I realize that those words upset some people and to them, I’d like to apologize immediately. A high-level athlete who is a role model cannot say everything that goes through his head, even less when it’s vulgar language.
In my defence, the organizers had just scheduled my doubles right after my singles. This scheduling made my success nearly impossible. Indian Wells being an important goal, my tremendous frustration made me lose control of my language.
I would truly like to apologize for having wounded the Chinese community!”
We think it's a start, but the apology doesn't really go far enough to convince everybody in the Chinese community, Michael with an umlaut. Perhaps some mentions about how much you love Chinese food, and your affinity for Chinese character tattoos, and how sexy and exotic you think women with slanted eyes look? To let everyone know how much of a non-racist you are? Might just do the trick.
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