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ROGERS CUP WOMENAugust 10, 2014Eugene LapierreMONTREAL, QUEBEC THE MODERATOR: Questions for Eugene in English. Q. The electricity thing on Tuesday. You were out that entire day. Did you have electricity back the second day or was that only generators on Wednesday? EUGENE LAPIERRE: You want to know why we had generators? Because as much as we put the generators on on Tuesday, to make the switch, when the line was ready during the night, like early in the morning, to make the switch from the generators to the regular line, it was like three to four hours of work with the place shut down. We didn't want to take a chance to do that in the morning, encounter any sort of problems, not be able to start at 12:00. Television, everybody said, We'll do the day and start making the switch overnight. Q. With Bouchard leaving so early in the tournament, did you feel that impacted maybe not ticket sales but attendance figures? EUGENE LAPIERRE: Oh, certainly. I'm sure that a lot of people would have wanted to come and see Eugenie throughout the week. That's obvious. I don't know how many. I don't know that. I hope I'll see that next time. Q. Did you have any impact in terms of sales when the electricity went out? EUGENE LAPIERRE: Yes. We have to evaluate that. Certainly the catering just was shut down pretty much. Even if they had food, like cold food, nothing could work to get the customers to pay. Ticket sales, it was not so bad because the session, we were already in the middle of the afternoon. Some people were coming at night. The trick was it was difficult to get their tickets. Nothing would work. We got a small generator very quickly to get the ticket sales working, so it was not impacted too much there. Q. This week an article was published in the Sports Business Journal that between the sports council and Masters 1000s, players are looking for a doubling of money in the next four years. I wonder if you have an opinion about this? EUGENE LAPIERRE: It's a negotiation that's taking place now. I'm not going to add too much to that. Hopefully we will have more news in New York where it's at. We need to get this done before the end of the year, of course, because it starts 2015. THE MODERATOR: Questions in French. Q. The big names of tennis stayed until the end of this tournament, and you broke the world record of attendance. You must be proud. EUGENE LAPIERRE: We are very pleased. There is always something happening in this tournament. We had 40,000 spectators for the last three days of the week. People came in numbers. The stadium was open. We also had drama with the power shortage. This allowed us to test our teams, and they responded really well. We would have liked Eugenie to go further in the tournament, but the big names of tennis were still there. Radwanska is the most consistent player. She's been top 3 for a while now. I would say she is the anti‑star of the top 10. She's a very nice girl. She's very discreet. She's extraordinarily efficient on the court. We believe that the crowd would favor Venus because Venus is the story of the week. She charmed the Montréalers. Q. What is your favorite memory of this week? EUGENE LAPIERRE: Venus' path in the tournament. She was able to get the love of all the Montréal inhabitants and I'm sure she will be very eager to come back two years from now. Q. Can you talk to us about Radwanska. EUGENE LAPIERRE: The way I see it, she's the less flamboyant of the top 10. In the locker rooms, according to what I was told, she laughs all the time and she likes also to make fun of herself. When she plays, she needs the strength of the opponent. She likes pace. I believe Venus fell in that trap. She wanted to be aggressive, but a bit too much, I believe. Agnieszka keeps winning, although we can't see any big shots from her. She's able to move incredibly well on the court. It is impressive. We never see her actually running. If you want to learn how to run on a tennis court, just watch Radwanska. Q. What did you learn this week that you didn't know before with all your experience? EUGENE LAPIERRE: This tournament needs generators. Giulia Orlandi from the WTA does not come often here. She usually covers the European tournaments. She gave me tons of ideas. She said our tournament is the most European tournament this side of the Atlantic. I'd very much like to work with her. We are going to keep some ideas she gave us coming from Europe. Power independence will become very important, too. Although we haven't had an electrical failure in 33 years. Q. Are you thinking about permanent facilities? EUGENE LAPIERRE: Yes, we are going to study this possibility. We'll see if it is feasible. Being independent will certainly become very important. Q. Every year you are breaking new records of attendance. How can you manage to have more and more people? EUGENE LAPIERRE: Well, we have a big stadium. The main one can hold almost 12,000, and the other one 4,500, and those stadiums were not full. With the men's tournament, we reached 215,000 spectators. The previous record for a women's tournament of 175,000 spectators happened in 2006. So it is not every year we are breaking records. The first days, there were still some seats available. We can also schedule matches on other courts to increase the number of spectators. Q. It's rare to see so many matches in three sets on a Friday. How can you explain this? EUGENE LAPIERRE: That's true. We had 21 matches in three sets up till yesterday, which means that more than half the matches were in three sets. This goes to the depth of the tour. As Arantxa was saying earlier, we just had to look at the draw and we knew who was going to play the final, whereas now players just look at the next round to see who they have to play because from the first round on all players are dangerous. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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