Tennis

Amélie Van Impe (19) shared her shocking story with the world this week.

As a barely 19-year-old tennis player, currently ranked 536 in the official WTA rankings, she is being severely harassed. She receives daily threats from aggressive gamblers.

Ever since she turned pro at 16, she has been receiving hate messages and threats from frustrated gamblers who lose money because of her wins or losses. 

In "No cap: place your bets" on VTM Go, she tells her story. Immediately after the end of each match, Amélie receives messages. Week by week, those numbers add up quickly. "When we play an international tournament, we have about four to five matches a week. Then fifteen to twenty messages soon follow in that same week. Now I haven't played for three weeks, and look, I haven't received a single message," she told Het Nieuwsblad.

The messages often come from fake profiles on social media and are often in English. Sometimes gamblers even send account statements to show how much money they lost. Amélie never replies to these messages. Her family members are also already being targeted and receiving threatening messages. "Someone wished my mother breast cancer. Or said, 'I hope you get raped.' That's about it. Or they say they know where you or your family live... The fact that they contact me, I have to be able to deal with that as a player. But that they harass my family, I think that's very unfortunate."

(FVDV for Tagtik/Source: No cap: place your bets - Nieuwsblad/Illustration picture: Pixabay)