Athletes are faced with adversity all the time, it’s the great ones that find a way to overcome major challenges and still find a way to excel.
I’m not sure exactly where German volleyball stars Karla Borger and Julia Sude land on the overcoming adversity meter, but they are making big news with the stand their taking regarding an upcoming tournament in Qatar.
Borger and Sude have decided to boycott the upcoming FIVP event in Qatar because they don’t want competitors to wear bikinis on the court.
Tournament officials are asking female players to wear shirts and long trousers when they hit the beach. That doesn’t fly for the German star players.
“We are there to do our job, but are being prevented from wearing our work clothes,” Borger said during an interview with the radio station Deutschlandfunk.
Borger and Sude are elite competitors. They recently won a silver medal in the world championships, so they would be a big draw for the FIVP World Tour event in Qatar.
The upcoming tournament in March will be the first time a women’s volleyball event has been held there. Men have been coming for events for the past seven years.
When the Qatar volleyball association found out about the boycott, they backpedaled a little and claimed they were not enforcing the no-bikini rule. They issued a statement, in part saying they were “committed to ensuring that all athletes are made to feel welcome and comfortable at next month’s event. We would like to make clear that we are not making any demand on what athletes should wear at the event.”
The dynamic duo of Borger and Sude aren’t budging. Even though they put their pants on one leg at a time just like any other volleyball tandem, they just don’t want to wear pants when they are competing.
“This is really the only country and the only tournament where a government tells us how to do our job — we are criticizing that,” they said.
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