Tennis US Open 2020

[heywoodu 14,908]

8 minutes ago, dcro said:

 

Thiem is at whole another level. Almost all of the other top players do take part at the Olympics, after all.

 

For a player of such rank and wealth as Thiem, there is simply no valid excuse for skipping the Olympic tournament...

Whether or not his reason is valid really is just a matter of opinion. "Austria doesn't have many other medal chances" certainly doesn't seem like a valid reason to go to the Olympics (after all, he'd go for himself, not the country), although that's of course also just an opinion. 

[OlympicsFan 858]

5 hours ago, dcro said:

And yet Thiem still plans to enter some B-tournament over the Olympics...?

 

Ugh, I could never care about his titles then. It's not like Austria has many medal chance (at all).

I think they have a bunch of medal chances in sports like athletics, sailing or Mountainbike. I also don’t see why he shouldn’t skip the Olympics if he can earn more money/ranking points somewhere else.

[dcro 10,210]

5 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Whether or not his reason is valid really is just a matter of opinion. "Austria doesn't have many other medal chances" certainly doesn't seem like a valid reason to go to the Olympics (after all, he'd go for himself, not the country), although that's of course also just an opinion. 

Oh come on... It takes a village to make a world-class sportsperson. Everyone knows that. Thiem did not became US Open champion by himself.

 

Therefore skipping the Olympics for some selfish reasons definitely qualifies as disrespectful behaviour towards his country and home fans. Because, mark my words, he never would have won the US Open had he been born in Eswatini or Uruguay.

[OlympicsFan 858]

7 hours ago, Vic Liu said:

The 5th set is a tragedy. Totally not watchable for audience. I really like Thiem and I know he will win the GS sooner or later but I couldn't congrats him based on the poor quality of this match.

It was a very low quality match, but very entertaining/unpredictable for me. Thiem choked away the first two sets and Zverev choked away the fifth set. The pressure of being the Favorit obviously got to Thiem, but I think in the future he will be more relaxed in slam finals.

[OlympicsFan 858]

3 minutes ago, dcro said:

Oh come on... It takes a village to make a world-class sportsperson. Everyone knows that. Thiem did not became US Open champion by himself.

 

Therefore skipping the Olympics for some selfish reasons definitely qualifies as disrespectful behaviour towards his country and home fans. Because, mark my words, he never would have won the US Open had he been born in Eswatini or Uruguay.

I understand your reasoning, but then you should also criticize players like Zverev or Djokovic.

[dcro 10,210]

And not just that. I hate it when golfers and to a lesser extent tennis players pretend to be above other athletes with their typical statements like "Olympics is athletics and swimming. I'd rather watch it on TV than take part."

[heywoodu 14,908]

23 minutes ago, dcro said:

Oh come on... It takes a village to make a world-class sportsperson. Everyone knows that. Thiem did not became US Open champion by himself.

Well yes, his coaches and so on, but I mean there's no need for him to change plans to chase the biggest prizes in his sport just because the big masses think the Olympics is the main thing in every sport - which it simply isn't.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of these players skipping the Olympics, but don't have that much of a problem with it neither.

[LDOG 2,416]

The "big masses" don't actually think that (at least not the ones that follow tennis, they mostly care about GSs and nothing else). Also I don't think austrians are particularly nationalistic to care much about it. Maybe in another more nationalistic country an athlete doing that would get a lot of shit.

  

Thiem is on his right to skip the olympics. Sadly money talks and for these super professional sports like tennis, golf, cycling, basketball or football there is not much the NOC can do to enforce athlete participation other than hope for their good will to represent the country.  

  

 

[Monzanator 4,457]

Maybe if tennis was played at Winter OG then Thiem wouldn't be so quick to ignore it

[dcro 10,210]

33 minutes ago, LDOG said:

Sadly money talks

But that's like the whole point. Olympics are one tournament and Thiem is rich as it is.

 

And to reiterate... Despite all this big talk about tennis players being above the Olympics, in the end very few of them choose to skip it. Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, Murray never missed it as far as I know.  So, yes, I can see only selfish reasons behind such decision. In particular since Austria is consistently at risk of finishing with 0 medals.