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NEED TO CATCH up? The Journal brings you a round-up of today’s news.
#NEW NAMES: Covid-19 variants are to be known by letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigmatising nations where they were first detected.
#NO DEATHS: The UK reported no further deaths linked to Covid-19 for the first day since summer last year.
Naomi Osaka announced yesterday that she would withdraw from the French Open because of the furore caused by her boycott of media duties.
Psychology professor Peter Terry writes in The Journal today that there are “two sides to this story”.
He writes:
On the one hand, this is part of the contract, it’s part of the deal. Tennis players get paid millions of dollars and in return they have to do media interviews whether they win or lose.
The issue is when you have somebody like Osaka, who is by her own admission an introverted person with high social anxiety. She essentially hates doing this stuff but knows she has to.
If there was ever a public cry for help, this is it. She’s talked about suffering bouts of depression since she won the US Open in 2018, how she wears headphones to try to cope with her social anxiety to stay in her own little bubble.
She knew that if she lost at the French Open again, there would be a forensic examination of her inability to win on clay that would just reinforce her own self-doubt. So, she decided not put herself through that.
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