Player’s kiss tries get no love
A French tennis player made all the wrong moves — and not just on the court. After losing in straight sets to Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas in the first round of the French Open, Maxime Hamou attempted to plant several kisses on a female reporter during his exit interview. While some of the hosts of the Frenchlanguage program Avantage Leconte that broadcast the moment live on the country’s Eurosport channel laughed at the situation, others, including French Open organizers, took the matter more seriously.
On Tuesday, tournament organizers banned Hamou from returning to Roland Garros for the duration of this year’s tournament.
“The management of the tournament has decided to revoke Maxime Hamou’s accreditation following his reprehensible behavior with a journalist,” the French Tennis Federation said in statement, via the Telegraph.
Hamou has not publicly commented on the incident but was heavily criticized by viewers at home, as well as the reporter herself, Maly Thomas, who told Huffington Post France on Monday that the interaction was “frankly unpleasant.”
Thomas added ( via a BBC translation): “If I hadn’t been live on air, I would have punched him.”
Footage from the interview shows Thomas stepping to get her microphone closer to Hamou, but when she approaches, the 21- year- old immediately puts his arm around her and attempts to kiss her neck. He can be seen attempting to kiss her several more times as she tries to duck out of his grasp. At one point, Thomas can be seen trying to lift his arm up to escape.
“He kisses her by force, she tries to get away, he holds her by the neck and everyone … laughs # tired,” French politician Cécile Duflot wrote on Twitter, criticizing the Eurosport hosts’ reaction to the interaction.
Several of the hosts shown simultaneously on the screen can be seen and heard laughing as Hamou awkwardly restrains Thomas from moving away from him.