Does anyone have an idea to help Wimbledon organizers finish their 2023 edition on time? Last Grand Slam without night session, the British tournament also suffered a particularly rainy Wednesday, which complicated the progress of its final draw. We can now add to this bad weather a match interruption by Just Stop Oil.
This meeting of the first round (yes yes, this Wednesday) between the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov and the Japanese Sho Shimabukuro was indeed briefly disrupted by the irruption on court 18 of two activists from this environmental organization.
A man and a woman entered the lawn throwing orange glitter confetti, “harmless to the environment”, as the association said in a press release, as well as puzzle pieces. The man then went to sit in a service square, near the net.
Cricket and snooker recently disrupted
The two activists were evacuated by the security service before agents of the organization cleaned the lawn. Just Stop Oil is an organization which campaigns for the British government to prohibit the exploitation of new deposits of oil or natural gas. She has already organized several peace actions at high-profile sporting events, including the traditional cricket match between Australia and England last week.
The world championships in snooker, a variant of billiards very popular in Britain, have also been targeted. Wimbledon organizers had claimed before the start of the tournament that security had been tightened to prevent such actions. Vigilance is a priori not quite the same on court number 18 as on the Center Court.