Ilie Nastase banned until 2021 and given £8k fine for Fed Cup misdemeanours
Ilie Nastase, the disgraced Romanian Fed Cup captain, has been banned from acting in an official capacity in team tennis competitions until 2021 and fined £7,700 for his various misdemeanours during April's tie against Great Britain.
Nastase has also been suspended from attending International Tennis Federation (ITF) events until 2019, though that excludes ATP and WTA tournaments such as the grand slams as they are outside of the ITF's jurisdiction.
The punishment is a response to Nastase's behaviour in April that saw him call the tie referee a "f****** arsehole" and Johanna Konta a "f****** bitch". Nastase had earlier made an uninvited joke about Serena Williams’ unborn baby, who has a white father. "Let’s see what colour it has. Chocolate with milk?" he said.
Nastase also asked British Fed Cup captain Anne Keothavong for her room number and stormed into the press centre to unleash a tirade against a British journalist, labelling her "stupid" for reporting his comments, and later calling her "ugly".
All of these incidents were taken into account by the ITF, who found Nastase guilty of breaching four articles of the Fed Cup Welfare Policy.
The ITF dismissed the 71-year-old's submitted defence of his comments about Williams where he claimed that he comes from a nation where racism is not "as delicate an issue as it may be in other parts of the world".
Nastase also argued that his comments to Keothavong were jokes designed to "reduce tension surrounding the tie" and to display a "friendliness" towards the British team.
Because Nastase's ban only relates to ITF events, it will fall to individual tournaments to decide whether to admit the Romanian or not. The All England Club withdrew its usual invitation to Nastase to sit in the Royal Box at this year's Wimbledon, but it will be at the US Open's discretion as to whether to ban him from the next grand slam of the year in August. The US Open could not be contacted last night.
Bans like these are rare in tennis, with the most recent comparable case being the one-match suspension of Nastase himself in 1994. On that occasion Nastase was banned from a Davis Cup tie against Great Britain in Manchester after he had insulted match officials while captaining the Romanian team against South Africa in Johannesburg earlier that year.
The Belgian Fed Cup captain Dominique Monami meanwhile told the Daily Telegraph earlier this year that Nastase had called her a "big bitch" when her team travelled to Romania in February.
