The article discusses British tennis player Harriet Dart's unsportsmanlike conduct during a match. Midway through a loss, she complained about her opponent's body odor. This outburst is contrasted with the less pungent environments of other sports like ice hockey and rugby.
Dart's comment is described as childish and petulant, particularly given her significant defeat. Her opponent, Boisson, responded humorously on social media, even suggesting a sponsorship opportunity with Dove antiperspirant.
Dart swiftly apologized for her behavior via Instagram, demonstrating a wise move to mitigate the negative publicity.
While not explicitly detailed, the article hints at similar incidents in Dart's past, indicating a pattern of poor sportsmanship.
Indeed, compared to other sports, tennis barely merits a place in the odour top 10. In ice hockey, for instance, the inevitability of getting warm in a cold place while wearing large amounts of kit invariably gives the dressing room after a game a ripe whiff. In rugby, it is not unheard of for a prop, invoking the dark arts of the front row, to consume improbable amounts of garlic the night before a game, to get right up their opposite number’s nose. Wrestling, too, with its obligation to put the head in close proximity to the most intimate parts of an opponent, is not for the faint-nosed. As for the gym, all that working out in an enclosed space in kit that may not have been near a washing machine for several months, can make the atmosphere close to intolerable.
But tennis? The other player’s relationship with the shower is not really an issue. Which made Dart’s outburst all the more odd. Though given it was delivered midway through a 6-0, 6-3 defeat by a player who had come through the qualifiers, it was not so much odd as childish, petulant and sulky. This was the most schoolgirlish complaint – “Miss, she smells, err”.
Not that her opponent was unduly bothered. Boisson, perhaps bolstered by unexpected victory, took the insult in good part. She may not have heard it on court, but she was quickly made aware of it afterwards, and posted on social media a picture of herself in the dressing room holding some antiperspirant, with the caption “@Dove apparently need a collab.” A smart move. Not only did she look humorous and magnanimous, she was seizing the opportunity to court a sponsor.
As for Dart, she was quick to back down.
“Hey everyone, I want to apologise for what I said on court today, it was a heat-of-the-moment comment that I truly regret,” she wrote on the sportperson’s preferred vehicle of communication, Instagram.
It was a wise thing to do. And clearly the next time the heat of the moment gets a little too warm for her, she would be advised to apply some verbal roll-on.
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