A/69/340 criticized the lingering racism and referred to an incident during the 2003 Rugby World Cup in which a player had refused to share a room with a black teammate for racist reasons. 19. The Special Rapporteur observes that some representatives of sports federations, club officials and managers have trivialized racist chants from sports fans. Their usual interpretation of these events attributes racist utterances to rivalry and to emotions associated with competitive sporting events, and they tend to downplay them For example, in November 2011, the President of the Federation for International Football Association (FIFA), Joseph Blatter, dismissed the existence of racism among football players; he referred to such incidents as “the game”, suggesting that racial comments by players were justified during a match . 8 In April 2014, a national football team coach stated that there was no racism in football and that he chose to believe that a previous incident in his team was an isolated act .9 These kinds of statements serve to undermine the struggle against racism and xenophobia. 20. Racist comments by club officials and managers during sports ev ents have also been reported. In May 2014, the owner of a United States basketball team reportedly made racial comments during a private phone conversation. 10 The Special Rapporteur observes that racially motivated insults during matches and sports events are not exclusively spectator-related but also common practice among opposing athletes. On October 2011, player Luis Suarez was banned from stadiums for eight matches and fined £40,000 for racially abusing another player during an English Premier League match. 11 In 2013, player Nicolas Anelka had his contract terminated for gross misconduct after he made a gesture regarded as anti -Semitic during an English Premier League match. 12 Similarly, in 2013, Belgian player Omar Rahou was banned for 10 games with his national team from any competition organized by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), after he made the same gesture several times during a game. 13 Many similar incidents of anti-Semitism and racism have been reported in football and other sports. 21. The Special Rapporteur would also like to address the issue of equal access by ethnic minorities to sports, including sports that are historically known as “white” or “elite”, such as cycling, tennis, golf, equestrian events and swimming . Wealth plays an important role in restricting access to certain sports and those in which participation requires higher incomes tend to reflect less diversity. 14 In tennis, while players such as Serena and Venus Williams have been ranked as top international players for years, the number of black players in European and North American __________________ 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 14-59616 See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/international/8894556/Sepp-Blatter-Fifapresident-claims-there-is-no-racism-in-football.html. See http://espndeportes.espn.go.com/news/story?id=2076652&s=esp&type=story. See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/nba-la-clippers-donald-sterling-lifetimeban-racist-comments. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2076452/Luis-Suarez-given-match-banrace-row.html. See http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/nicolas-anelka-quenelle-west-brom-3190106. See http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/uefa-hand-futsal-player-omar-3206798#ixzz 33rA1rA7B. See, for example, http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper& Itemid=805, http://www.fei.org/fei/fei-partners/longines/rankings, http://www.atpworldtour.com/ Rankings/Singles.aspx and http://www.owgr.com/ranking (accessed 21 July 2014). 7/21