Harassment of Emma Raducanu reminds us women still bear brunt of

If you watched any of Emma Raducanu’s Tuesday match against Karolina Muchova, it was probably only the two clips, stitched together neatly for the news highlights. Raducanu approaching the umpire. Raducanu wiping away tears with a towel.

An emotional Raducanu is an instant headline, although this wasn’t a case of injury or frustration. Having seen a man in the crowd whose off-court behaviour had already concerned her, she was doing the sensible thing and reporting it. The Daily Mail reported that she was “reduced to cowering behind the umpire’s chair”. What a brilliantly multi-purpose use of language: paternalistic readers can get heroically angry on her behalf while the others write her off as a snowflake.

mma Raducanu had been provided with a beefed up security detail prior to her match at the Dubai Championships after organisers were made aware of a ‘fixated individual’.

The 22-year-old was approached on Monday and handed a letter by a man she had seen several times before. At noon on Tuesday, the day of Raducanu’s second-round match against Karolina Muchova, security teams for the WTA and the tournament were informed of the potential threat.

Standard procedure is for a player to be escorted from the player area to court and back by a minimum of one security officer – this was ramped up in response to the threat, with a security team assigned to escort Raducanu to the match court and remain throughout the match.

The bid to intercept the man before he entered the court failed but the security team was on hand to swiftly remove him once he was spotted in the crowd.

While all that was going on, Raducanu was in tears and hiding behind the umpire’s chair, where she was comforted by her opponent Muchova.

Raducanu thanked Muchova for her help in an Instagram post.

‘Thank you for the messages of support,’ she wrote, alongside a picture of her cup of coffee and Emma, by Jane Austen. ‘Difficult experience yesterday but I’ll be okay and proud of how I came back and competed despite what happened at the start of the match.

‘Thank you to Karolina for being a great sport and best of luck to her for the rest of the tournament.’