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An Italian tennis player has apologized after repeatedly calling himself a homophobic slur during his Olympic tennis match.
Fabio Fognini, 34, repeatedly shouted “frocio” at himself as he began losing points to his opponent, Russia’s, Daniil Medvedev, 25. It roughly translates as “faggot.”
The Russian, seeded number two, eventually beat Fognini 6-2, 3-6, 6-2 and now advances to the quarter-finals stage. After the final point, Fognini threw his racket into a courtside trash can. His use of the word “frocio” was picked up by several on social media.
Per chi avesse dubbi sulle parole di Fognini#giochiolimpici pic.twitter.com/r06LJqycHC
— timmita (@timmita13) July 28, 2021
The match lasted 2hours and 26 minutes and was played in great humidity. In fact, so exhausting was the heat that following two medical timeouts, and nearly fainting, Medvedev even took a shower between the second and third sets.
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Fognini, currently ranked 31 in the world, blamed the weather conditions on his use of homophobic language. After the match, on his Instagram stories, he posted the following apology in Italian against a rainbow background.
“The heat went to my head. In today’s match I used a really stupid expression towards myself. Obviously, I didn’t want to offend anyone’s sensibilities. I love the LGBT community and I apologize for the nonsense that came out of me.”
Fognini has a reputation for being hot-headed. He was thrown out of the US Open in 2017 for calling a female umpire “troia” and “bocchinara” – which translate as “whore” and “cocksucker”. That incident came as an angry Fognini lost his first-round singles match, and resulted in him losing his place in the event’s doubles tournament.
Related: Woman becomes viral sensation for ogling shirtless tennis player
cuteguy
Sorry excuse from a sorry excuse of a man (and tennis player). Gurl bye
Ignorant losers come from all over the world. Let’s learn not to be like these losers
alexpof
so now we have to apologize for what we call ourselves?? so estupid people are so stupid
Cam
Except you use “We”. He isn’t LGBTQ. So why try to pretend he’s a member of the community?
alexpof
yes WE as all human beings, nobody is pretendig he is part of ANY community, he was talking to HIMSELF and he can use any word he wants
daveperso
He is probably a nice guy but homophobia is quite entrenched in Italy and he is just using default insult language. But he and many others need to understand that this language is very damaging and fuels stereotypes. It is not innocent banter. Happy he was picked out and happy he apologised. Let’s see if he does it again.
Bengali
Loving on your ignorance. If you were black and someone kept calling themselves a n***** it wouldn’t offend you? The use of any slur publicly makes others think it’s perfectly fine (well, to the feeble minded at least). And kids who hear it will likely repeat it. So no, it’s not okay.
jthomasmpls
We don’t know he’s not a we. He’s married to a woman and could very well be bisexual.
Chrisk
I can’t believe anyone would sit in the hot heat watching a tennis tournament even though I like to play it myself. I wonder which is more boring. Watching tennis or golf. Lol
linedrive
I enjoy live tennis…never been to a golf tournament. But there are no spectators at this particular tournament due to COVID-19 restrictions at the Olympics.
Kangol2
Sorry to hear you find watching tennis live boring. It can actually be quite thrilling, particularly if top players (i.e., pros of any sort, or even talented college or high school tennis players) are facing off against each other. Golf is more interesting to watch on TV, I think, especially if you have top players hitting the greens, sinking putts, getting out of the rough in as few strokes as possible, and incredible plays like holes-in-one and eagles. It’s as much a counting game as an athletic one.
Bengali
Golf way more boring. Plus in tennis the athletes tend to be in pretty good shape and some of them are very hot. In golf…well, mostly it’s hours upon hours of fat older men hobbling on the course.
Cam
So based on this, if Republicans all moved to Michigan or North Dakota they’d suddenly not be bigots? Doesn’t seem to be working.
Derek Northcutt
And now will come the stampede to “cancel” him. Haven’t you ever lost your head and done something stupid? I do every day, so, “qu’on lui coupe les têtes!”
James
FUK OFF WITH YOU MAKING EXCUSES FOR HOMOPHOBIA. PATHETIC.
MISTERJETT
Derek, go jump!!!!!!
Bengali
While I don’t consider his comment homophobia (at least at the moment) I do have disdain for him using the word. Tennis caters to a wide audience including kids, young adults as well as overall stupid people. Most impressionable though are kids who hear this language and it normalizes it for the so they think it’s okay to say it too.
Fahd
He didn’t call himself an ethnic or racial slur, he didn’t call himself a gender slur (e.g. “girly”), instead he used the f-word to call himself what he has in his mind as the weakest most inept, error-prone loser stereotype he could think of, the stereotype that is so, so bad that it will motivate him to do anything to play better so that he can’t be labeled as that stereotype. In his mind, the worst of the worst would be to be the f*. (No doubt the f alliteration of his names and the slur is something he’s heard before.)
This is the kind of homophobic mentality that society ingrains in young people who grow up to be 34 year old good, but not very top, tennis players who externalize these deep-seated prejudices when they have lost their inhibitions.
As an individual he’s irrelevant, although a really classy club probably would have him as its pro after this. What needs to change is the societal/cultural embedding of these homophobic stereotypes in future generations.
MynameisSid
I really liked him too, I’ll have to sit with this a moment to see if I can bring myself to watch him in his next tournament.
I like him… Partly for his game, partly because he is hot.
atypical
You say that you think that he is hot, but what if his heart is C-O-L-D?
Todd.Brooklyn
He is an ass that has done things like this before. The saddest part of it is that I don’t believe he is a homophobe, but an idiot who learned this as a cuss word and not as much as a epithet – however that is not an excuse and he should know better and even more reason to reclaim words so they don’t have the power
James
GLAD THIS CREEP IS GONE.
Joseph1971
I am a huge tennis fan and unfortunately prefer hot players like Fognini. I guess I need to reevaluate which players I root for and not use my taste of men as a decision maker. Obviously Fabio should not be on the “top” of my list of preferred players, really disappointed in him.
JRamonMc
I guess my only question is how could anyone know with certainty that he doesn’t live a bisexual life style. Sure he may have a wife and child, but as we all know today that means absolutely nothing. Could he use the f word towards himself as other cultures use the n word towards each other? Either way in my opinion, neither should be uttered by anyone. It’s hateful language in any culture.
IanHunter
I can agree with that! Good statement.
IanHunter
Bye, Felica!
MISTERJETT
so what excuse does he use when the weather is cold?
Kangol2
I was glad to see Medvedev send Fognini out of the tournament and back to Italy. Fognini has toxic masculinity issues, and clearly is also a lazy homophobe. As concerning during this match was Medvedev growing so overheated he could barely stand up, and at one point thinking he might die! A Spanish woman tennis player also had to be taken off the court for heat-related illness. I mean, why are the Olympics organizers holding matches in these extremely humid, dangerous conditions? Supposedly today they’ll begin games at night, when it’s marginally cooler, but they could have had a far graver situation on their hands.
Cam
Forgive him. Anybody can be unreasonable in the moment and revert to mistakenly using a bad word.
DennisMpls
I’m going to go against the grain here, and likely annoy several of my fellow commenters. Our society (and our community) is too often instantly reactive, with a default reaction of outrage and attack. We don’t know if his comments were reflective of any level of homophobia, or if in the “heat” of the moment (in both senses) he defaulted to ingrained epithets that he didn’t mean. When I was growing up we used all sorts of epithets that we didn’t mean, and of which we often didn’t even know the meaning. Two I recall being very popular were “c*cksuck*r” and “mother*ucker”. Those and others were just ingrained in us, and tumbled out in moments of rage or frustration.
Earlier in this thread “daveperso” pointed out that homophobia is quite prevalent in Italy, and so gay epithets are likely used from an early age. Fognini’s apology strikes me as genuine, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. You can call that “making excuses” if you want, but although I’m a tennis fan I’ve never heard of this guy, and so have no need to make any excuses. I just prefer to not default to instant outrage and cancellation.
dhmonarch89
Tennis doesn’t seem to have a penalty system for homophobia- maybe that’s why no male player has come out during their career…. they have fines/penalty system in place for racial slurs- if he had said the N’word a dozen times- he would have been suspended and fined up to $250,000
dhmonarch89
his main sponsors are K-Swiss (shoes), Emporio Armani (clothes), Tsunami Nutrition (supplements) and Bolon Eye Wear (glasses). All have IG and twitter- let them know they shouldn’t support homophobia- THAT’S why he apologized and said he loves us- he doesn’t want to lose sponsors- that;s the only reason these people apologize, it’s 2021- they know it’s wrong.
Sanjo
I didn’t know who he was yesterday. I won’t remember who he is tomorrow.
atypical
We REALLY need to start speaking out against this kind of trash whether they are in a mental “fog” or not!