Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka, who has often suffered from her origins, stopped the tennis world • In protest of the "persecution of blacks by police" she announced her retirement from the Cincinnati tournament and swept the entire industry, which sat • revolutionary

• Osaka. Stopped the tennis world

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What started with the NBA teams and then slipped into every corner of American sports, eventually reached tennis as well - thanks to one player. Just before playing in the semifinals of the Cincinnati Tournament (which takes place in New York due to the Corona Crisis) Naomi Osaka joined the wave of athlete protests following the shooting of cops by Jacob Blake this week in Wisconsin. 

"Before I became an athlete, I was first and foremost a black woman," the U.S. champion wrote in 2018, "and as a black woman I feel there are now many burning issues that require treatment and are more important than watching me play tennis." Osaka added: "I do not expect "My retirement will cause something dramatic, but if I start a discourse in sports that is mostly white, then it will be a step in the right direction." 

To Osaka's surprise, her decision did cause something dramatic. is very. Two hours after the Japanese announced they would not advance to the game against Alice Martens and finish their way into the tournament, a joint announcement by the men’s round, women’s round and the American Tennis Association announced that all additional games had been canceled and postponed until Friday. "As a sport, tennis is taking a stand against racial inequality and social injustice that have once again raised their heads in America," the statement read.

For Osaka this is a small victory in a big battle she has been waging lately. More precisely, this battle began at the height of the Corona outbreak and the assassination of George Floyd by American police in late May. Just then, in these terrible days, Osaka decided it was time to reorganize her priorities. In a letter to Esquire magazine last July, she explained: "I had to reboot myself. I decided it was time for me to start talking."

Enough of the persecution

As a Japanese and daughter of a Haitian father who grew up in the US, Osaka has always experienced racism. People tried to label her, and it took her a while to accept herself as she is. Now that she has matured and come to terms with her speeches Osaka, the 22-year-old Japanese is determined to act. Floyd's murder shook her to the depths of her soul, but unlike many she decided to take action. Osaka flew to Minneapolis a few days after the incident and made her voice heard in the streets. She demonstrated, comforted his family and cried over his grave.

When she returned home to Los Angeles she continued to demonstrate, signing petitions, donating money and time, and mostly continuing to ask herself what else she could do to make this world a better place. The main conclusion she reached was to keep talking, to keep acting, and not to close our eyes to what was happening. 

Just four days ago, before the latest Jacob Blake shooting incident, an interview with Osaka was published in WSJ magazine. "It bothers me that people think that athletes should only entertain and that they should not engage in political matters," she said there, "because first of all, it is a basic human right. And secondly, what gives you the right to talk about politics more than I do? By that logic, a man who works IKEA can only talk about furniture. "

Less than 24 hours have passed since that interview and America is on fire again. Again police violence against blacks, again an opportunity for Osaka to make a voice and take action. "Watching the persecution of blacks by police officers already makes me nauseous. I'm tired of having the same conversations over and over again," she wrote in a long post she published. In the same post she also announced her retirement from the Cincinnati tournament, all four days before the opening of the U.S. Open.

"Courage is contagious"

Osaka's last year and a half have not been sportingly good. Since winning the Australian Championship in early 2019 she has failed to advance to the fourth round of the Grand Slam tournament, was knocked out in the first round at Wimbledon and dropped from first place in the rankings to tenth. Despite this she is still the most lucrative athlete in the world, one of the most famous and influential, and she exploits this status of hers for things that are not solely related to the green ball. Many in the industry congratulate her on the move she made, call her a heroine and brave and recognize the importance of the event. As American writer and journalist Kylie Milner wrote: "I see that Osaka's speeches have closed tennis. Courage is probably a contagious thing."