Controversy Rocks Wimbledon...Player Stages Sit-Down Protest After Being Refused A Piss Break, Reportedly Pees In Empty Tennis Ball Can
The Guardian – Wimbledon and etiquette tend to go hand in hand but on Monday, on Court No7, there was a curious incident involving a leading doubles player, a refused bathroom break and a ball-can. Pablo Cuevas asked to go off court for a toilet break at 8-9 in the final set of the Uruguayan’s third-round match with Marcel Granollers of Spain against Britain’s Jonny Marray and Adil Shamasdin of Canada, only to be refused by the French umpire, Aurélie Tourte.
One witness claimed that Cuevas had urinated into the can, under the cover of a towel.
Marray and Shamasdin won the match 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 3-6, 14-12 and the pair tried their best to shed some light on the incident. “He got a code violation [at around 9-8] for unsportsmanlike conduct,” Shamasdin said. “It was during a changeover and I guess it was something to do with a can or something, I really don’t know. I think it has something to do even with bathroom breaks, I’m not really sure.”
[After the match]…they then harangued the umpire, thrusting a ball-can in her direction, and she was accompanied off the court by a security guard.
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You know it’s the middle of summer and the sports world is dead when we’re talking about Wimbledon. Wimbledon! But I got to say I do love and respect this move, no matter what the sport. I mean this dude 100% threw a tennis ball-can full of his own piss at this judge right? That’s what they’re implying in the article? That he peed in the can then chucked it at her on her way out? As he should have. Denying bathroom breaks like we’re in 5th grade and somebody already has the hall pass out or something. Get over yourself, tennis judge.
Makes sense that Wimbledon would deny the reports about it so strongly. Those Englishmen love etiquette more than they love their own mothers, loose urine flying through the air of the All England Club would be worse for them than Brexit. Guy peed on the judge. We all know it.
I will say though, Protest Culture working it’s way into professional sports is not a good omen.
The match ended in controversy, too, when Cuevas and Granollers staged a sit-down protest at 12-13, 0-40, facing three match points, after they were docked a point for a second code violation for slamming a ball out of the court. After a wait of well over five minutes the pair agreed to resume only after consulting the supervisor and promptly dropped serve and lost the match.
Under the rules for men’s doubles the players are supposed to take only two toilet breaks during a match but Marray, the 2012 doubles champion, said he thought Cuevas should have been allowed to go. “I think you should be allowed an extra toilet break if it goes to five sets,” he said. “Are you supposed to go before your own service game? I don’t know what the actual rule is. I think you should be allowed to go to the toilet. It’s deep in the fifth set. I went a couple of times.”
Peeing in a can and dumping it on someone, that’s how you do it. Protests, not so much.