The “Battle of the Sexes 2023”: a particular match forced by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine

When veteran American tennis player Bobby Riggs provocatively and almost procaciously invited mega-champion Billie Jean King to star in the most famous of, until a few days ago, three versions of the tennis version of The Battle of the Sexes, I would hardly have imagined that, half a century later, there would be an absolutely unexpected reversion of the duel, framed in an endless and painful geopolitical conflict.

A bit of history before the dark present.

In March 1973, Riggs crushed Margaret Smith (Court), then the best tennis player on the planet and several times winner of Grand Slam titles, with an eloquent 6-2 and 6-1. It was an uneven match in which the Australian was very uncomfortable due to the media noise caused by her rival. The experience lived in the California town of Ramona encouraged Riggs to go for more. That more was to challenge what is still today the great reference for the equal rights of women’s tennis compared to that of men.

A crowd filled the Houston Astrodome and millions followed BJK’s victory in straight sets.

In 1992, in Las Vegas, Jimmy Connors, about to retire, beat Martina Navratilova, the greatest female tennis player of all time, in straight sets.

No matter how hard the organizers put in, they were far from achieving the impact of the match played in September 1973 in the big city of Texas. It was not by chance that the cinema was responsible for telling that unique, although quite bizarre, story in sports. They did it with Steve Carrell featuring Riggs.

So far, the bright side of the Moon.

The “Battle of the Sexes 2023″ took place at the Négométal Open in Bourg-de-Péage, an exhibition tournament that featured a match between France’s Yanis Ghazouani-Durand and Russia’s Mirra Andreeva. Far from previous versions, this improvised duel between a man and a woman: the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, invaded in February of last year, was the source of the curiosity that occurred in France.

Marta Kostyuk (39th in the world) is the other protagonist of the story. The Ukrainian tennis player was invited to the exhibition due to the injury of the Croatian Donna Vekic (23rd) and she knew that she could play against Andreeva (57th) if the Russian defeated the French Varvara Gracheva (43rd), something that finally happened.

At first, Kostyuk had no problem confronting Andreeva, although after receiving intimidating messages on social media, she decided not to come forward. “Marta told us that she didn’t feel comfortable because of the threats and no one blamed her,” they explained from the organization, which needed to urgently look for a rival to define the women’s team. And they didn’t find it.

“For reasons that go beyond our will and due to the geopolitical context in Ukraine, Marta Kostyuk decided not to compete. Unfortunately, we have very little time to find a replacement, so we made the decision to have our player Yunis Ghazouani-Durand compete,” said the organizers.

The call for Ghazouani-Durand came as a surprise to him and at first he thought it was a joke: “I was making pancakes when at 10:30 the tournament director told me that Kostyuk had stepped down and there was a good chance that I would have to play with Andreeva, which was probably the only solution. At first I thought it was a joke, but when I saw the faces of the organizers I realized that they were serious.”

This is how this new “Battle of the Sexes” originated. On the one hand, the Russian Andreeva, who at just 16 years old is already Top 60 and reached the round of 16 this year at Wimbledon; on the other hand, Ghazouani-Durand, 23, 1145th in the ranking and without ATP matches in his career (he competes in the ITF World Tour). After an hour and 20 minutes of exhibition, the Frenchman won this new match between a man and a woman by 7-5 and 6-2.