Friday 25 November 2011

Are those Jo Wilfried Tsonga's comments?

Yannick Noah's wild accusations of doping in all Spanish sports were widely criticized this week, including reactions from all the top Spanish tennis players, Rafael Nadal among them. Nadal also added that French players Michael Llodra and Jo Wilfried Tsonga apologized to him on behalf of their compatriot.

Today, barely minutes after Jo Wilfried Tsonga's 7-6(2), 4-6, 6-3 win over Nadal in the final Round Robin match of Group B in the ATP World Tour Finals, the following words were posted on Tsonga's official twitter, @tsonga7, via his official Facebook page (both are connected, so that FB posts are automatically posted on twitter):
Tout çà pour montrer que les Espagnols sont pas dopés , merci Rafa t'es un vrai champion ;-)

Translated to English (helped by Google Translate), this means:
All this to show that Spaniards are not doped, thank you Rafa, you're a true champion ;-)
The (in my opinion) inappropriate tweet was deleted less than a minute after being posted.

Tsonga himself doesn't tweet at all from his account, and both his Twitter and Facebook accounts are run by his PR team, which mainly posts results and photos from official tour events. Sometimes, however, the photos posted on the page have a more personal touch to them (Example A, example B, note the ";-)"). Until today, I personally thought that occasionally Tsonga himself uses his FB page, but I'll be the first to admit that it's not more than a speculation.

In any case, somebody obviously posted this comment to the wrong account. Whether it was written by the player himself (for a possible personal account) or by a member of the PR team (for a personal account of his own) - we cannot know.

What I do know, however, is that such a comment is completely out of place. An apology, or at least an explanation, is expected.