This incident put tennis tournaments around the world on alert. Photo: Susan Mullane, USA Today Sports
As tennis looks ahead to the start of Wimbledon next week, safety and security concerns have been forced back into the limelight.
Less than two weeks ago in Paris, a masked protester leapt onto the court during the French Open final brandishing a flare, startling eventual champion Rafael Nadal and forcing a quick response from security personnel.
That came just more than a month after the bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon left three dead and more than 200 injured.
Those incidents have tournament directors around the world taking a closer look at their policies and procedures.
“Our security plans always are under review and reflect the current threat level,” Wimbledon officials said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports.
U.S. tournaments also are on alert.
When asked about the disruption at Roland Garros, Michael Rodriguez, director of security for the U.S. Open, said that security plans in place at his home Grand Slam would have prevented a similar incident.
“Not withstanding knowing their internal security program, I couldn’t comment any more on their setup,” said Rodriguez about security procedures at the French Open. “But I know that our security plan that we implement and have for years implemented some practices that would mitigate that risk from happening.”
Richard Bower, who owns Bower Events, Inc., a private security firm that consults on a regular basis with sporting events including the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and PGA Tour golf tournaments, reviewed the video of the masked man in Paris multiple times.
Though Bower wouldn’t speculate on how that individual and nine other protesters gained entry to the grounds of Roland Garros, Bower believes only a detailed physical search would have found the smoke bombs and flares brought onto the site.
“A lot of events use magnetometers to assure that weapons aren’t on the property,” Bower said. “But a magnetometer or a metal detector would not detect a smoke bomb or a flare. There are electronic “sniffers” that can detect incendiary devices but those have not been deployed at any tournament that I have worked at.
We are talking about a level of technology that is far beyond the reach of most sporting events.” – USA Today
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