Anna Kalinskaya, Moscow tennis player’s gesture still causes debate

There is still some discussion about what happened on Monday at the Foro Italico, at the end of the match valid for the women’s round of 16 of the Internazionali d’Italia between Anna Kalinskaya and Jelena Ostapenko, won by the latter 6-1, 6-2, breaking a series of four consecutive defeats in the previous matches against the Russian. The topic of discussion is, specifically, the failure to shake hands between the two athletes, who left the court without saying goodbye, as protocol would have it.

At first, many thought there were political reasons behind Kalinskaya’s choice to leave the court with her head down, without passing by her opponent. Ostapenko, however, has another explanation and, as reported by ‘Championat’, it is related to Kalinskaya’s on-court frustration, which would not have liked the fact that the Latvian insinuated that a medical timeout she requested due to injury was merely an attempt to break her opponent’s rhythm.

By the way, in the post-match press conference, Ostapenko had done nothing to tone it down: “I was ready for all kinds of games: simulations, calls to the physiotherapist and everything else. She is like that, she tries to make her opponent lose her rhythm when she is losing: I am proud of how I handled the match.”

The classic fuss on social media has not yet died down: on the one hand those who nevertheless read the scene politically, linking it to international tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian front, and on the other those who saw only a moment of sporting frustration, the child of a match that was never really in the balance between the Latvian tennis player, later defeated in the quarters by Sorana Cirstea, and Jannik Sinner’s former partner, who despite managing to climb up to 24th position in the ranking, has yet to take away a major satisfaction in 2026.