Death of George Floyd: Yannick Noah regrets 'silence' of white sportsmen

Yannick Noah, then captain of the French Davis Cup team, before the final against Croatia, November 22, 2018 at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Villeneuve-d'Ascq [COURTESY]

Yannick Noah, last French winner of Roland Garros, regretted Sunday "the silence" of the white sportsmen, after the death of George Floyd in the United States which started demonstrations around the world to protest against the discriminations against black Americans.

"It's good that the young people take care of it, but what bothers me is that they are all half-breeds or blacks," said the former tennis champion on France 2, when asked about the positions taken. by Gaël Monfils, Kylian Mbappé or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on this subject.

"Why? It is an injustice which should make everyone aware," he added. "There have been cases of more or less stifled cases. I am sure that the police in general do their job very well, but the bad apples sometimes have been given a little support."

Relaunched on the need for "white sportsmen" to get involved on the issue, the former tennis player converted to the song replied: "Yes, because their silence bothers me, it goes further than that".

"What reassures me as a half-breed is that fairly quickly we talk about injustice, he added, however. Yes, he's a black man, it has always happened, but then suddenly , there are also young white people, a young generation who realize that this is their future, they do not want to live in this world. "

Noah, winner of Roland-Garros in 1983 and who has just celebrated his 60 years, had already published last week a photo of him on his Instagram account, dressed in a white T-shirt where we could read "I can 't breathe, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd ".

In the video of the arrest after which he died, we hear George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American, repeating "I can't breathe" while a police officer plate on the ground, keeping his knee on his neck for long minutes.

Before Noah, six-time British F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton had regretted the "silence" of the "biggest stars" of his "white-dominated" sport and the 2014 German world football champion Jérôme Boateng had deemed "desirable" that more famous white athletes "use their notoriety" to fight racism.

This drama, which occurred on May 25 in Minneapolis, caused a wave of indignation in the world of sport, in the United States but also in the rest of the world. In the Bundesliga, this weekend, several clubs put a knee on the ground before their matches, in the wake of the Mönchengladbach Frenchman Marcus Thuram who had taken up last week the gesture popularized by the player of NFL (American Football League) Colin Kaepernick in 2016 to protest against police violence against blacks.