A Russian tennis participant suspected of intentionally shedding a doubles match at Roland Garros final season was launched on Friday by French police who arrested her after she misplaced on this 12 months’s competitors.
Yana Sizikova, 26, who’s 101st within the girls’s doubles rankings, was detained by a particular French unit on the grounds of the French Open, shortly earlier than 9pm (1900 GMT) on Thursday, a police and authorized supply instructed AFP.
Le Parisien newspaper, which first reported the arrest, stated that she was detained after she got here out of her post-match therapeutic massage. Her resort room was additionally searched, it added.
Sizikova was launched late on Friday with out being charged, the Paris prosecutor’s workplace stated.
“The investigation is continuous,” it stated.
An investigation into doable sports activities corruption and organised fraud was opened final October over a first-round match in 2020 by which Sizikova and her American associate Madison Brengle misplaced to Romanian pair Andreea Mitu and Patricia Maria Tig.
Suspicions had been aroused due to abnormally excessive betting exercise on the match in international locations exterior France, which was reported to legislation enforcement, a supply near the case instructed AFP on the time.
One sport particularly — the fifth of the second set — was being analysed by investigators after it featured two uncommon double-faults by Sizikova who misplaced her serve to like.
On Thursday, Sizikova and her new associate Ekaterina Alexandrova misplaced in below an hour 1-6, 1-6 to Australian pair Storm Sanders and Ajla Tomljanovic in the primary spherical of the ladies’s doubles.
Sizikova, who lives between Russia and Spain, was competing at Roland Garros for the primary time in 2020.
The quantities positioned in bets on her sport amounted to “tens of hundreds of euros”, a French supply stated in October.
The World Lottery Monitoring System in addition to the Group of Copenhagen, which brings collectively 33 nationwide anti-sports corruption our bodies, raised the alarm.
The president of the Russian tennis federation, Shamil Tarpichshev, stated the case was “an previous story”.
“This story has been operating since October. Till the paperwork (about Sizikova) are revealed, we are able to’t do something, we have now to attend,” he instructed TASS.
The participant’s lawyer in France, Frederic Belot, stated: “Yana Sizikova had nothing to reproach herself for and intends to present all the required explanations to French investigators.”
Belot stated the “critical accusations” stemmed from “a slanderous article by an Italian tennis blogger” in opposition to which the participant “intends to take authorized motion shortly for defamation and slander”.
Skilled tennis has been hit with match-fixing allegations previously, however solely comparatively junior gamers competing at lower-tier tournaments have been banned or convicted.
The Worldwide Tennis Integrity Company (ITIA) was created by the worldwide governing our bodies to research allegations in opposition to gamers and hand out sanctions.
In January this 12 months, it introduced lifetime bans in opposition to two low-ranking Russian girls’s doubles gamers, Sofia Dmitrieva and Alija Merdeeva, who had been discovered to have been concerned in match-fixing.
Sizikova is a doubles specialist with a present world singles rating of 765.
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