London: England women's football captain Kelly Smith said on Monday she would have "slapped" the on-court interviewer who asked Eugenie Bouchard "to give us a twirl" after the rising star's win at the Australian Open last week.
The on-court question, asked by a male interviewer and broadcast on Australia's Channel Seven, was widely slammed on social media as sexist and condemned by tennis great Billie Jean King among others.
"If I was asked by an interviewer to twirl I would probably have slapped him around the face or something. It was an insult to women's sport," said Smith, speaking at the launch of the Women's Sport Trust #BeaGamechanger Awards, designed to highlight the individuals and organisations doing most to promote women's sport.
"It shows that there still is that ignorance when it comes to women's sport and that transfers to kids today. People think it is still okay to say things like that. The more we raise the profile of women's sport through the Women's Sport Trust and awards such as these, the bigger the chance of knocking that behaviour and ignorance out of sport and society in general," Smith added.
King took to Twitter to blast the on-court interview. "The Australian Open interviewer asking the women 'to twirl' on court is out of line," said King.
— Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) January 22, 2015"This is truly sexist. If you ask the women, you have to ask the guys. Let's focus on accomplishments of both genders and not our looks," she added.
