Emma Navarro insists Zheng Qinwen ‘didn’t necessarily treat me or the sport with respect’
Emma Navarro maintains that Zheng Qinwen “disrespected” her during their Paris Olympics match, but once again refused to give more details about her grievances with the Olympic champion.
The pair met in the third round of the 2024 Games at Roland Garros and the Chinese athlete came away with a 6-7 (7-9), 7-6 (7-4), 6-1 victory.
There were some words between the pair at the net with Navarro clearly unimpressed by Zheng and she slammed her rival during the press conference, saying: “I just told her I didn’t respect her as a competitor.
“I think she goes about things in a pretty cut-throat way. It makes for a locker room that doesn’t have a lot of camaraderie, so it’s tough to face an opponent like that, who I really don’t respect.
“But, kudos to her, she played some good tennis there at the end. She played better than me, so congrats to her.”
Following Navarro’s quarter-final win over Paula Badosa at the US Open, the topic was brought up as she was due to face the winner of the Aryna Sabalenka-Zheng match.
There will be no rematch though as Sabalenka won, but Navarro was asked about the incident and replied: “I don’t want to go super into the weeds with it, but I think during that match and, you know, on the practice court and the last few times I’ve played her because we have been playing each other since we were juniors, I felt just a little bit disrespected by her.
“And, you know, I don’t want to go too into detail with it, but I think she didn’t necessarily treat me or the sport with respect, and that’s why I had, that’s why I said what I said after the match.”
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The Paris match was the pair’s second meeting on the WTA Tour with their other encounter coming in 2023 in Palermo.
Navarro insisted that her reaction was a long time coming.
“No, I haven’t spoken to her since. And no, I didn’t surprise myself. I felt that way the whole match,” she said. “Even if I had won, I probably would have said the same thing. It wasn’t a sort of in the moment, emotional thing. It was kind of just how I felt. And I think it got a lot more attention than I thought it was going to.
“I think maybe it’s just one person’s opinion, but it wasn’t an emotional outburst. It was kind of just matter of fact, how I felt.”
