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ROGERS CUP WOMENAugust 13, 2012Eugene LapierreMONTREAL, QUEBEC THE MODERATOR: Questions in French. Q. With this year being an Olympic year, we were expecting to have a difficult tournament. What are the results of this year? Are you disappointed? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Well, we didn't break our record with 150,000, but we are the women's tournament in the world that has the best results. This year we had an excellent financial result, although we didn't have as many spectators as usual. So we can talk about the negative effect of the Olympic Games, but I believe the attendance was lower because of the weather and the temperatures. People, if they were looking at the weather forecast for the day in the morning, certainly wouldn't want to get stuck in the stadium here. Q. So you had players who announced early they wouldn't come, and you had the players who pulled out at the last minute. Can we say then that the Canadian players saved the tournament? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Of course the Canadian players did create an interest that nobody expected in this tournament. Sharapova was sick, and Azarenka was injured. But the Canadians did very well. We had one in the quallies who reached the third round, and we were all wanting to see what Eugenie Bouchard was going to do after her title in Wimbledon. In fact, she really impressed us. She plays a very powerful game, and she is a winner. She always wants to do better. After her loss against Na Li here, Mr.Dorais wanted to congratulate her on her game.  She said, Don't congratulate me. I lost. Aleksandra is coming back pretty strong. I keep thinking she has been playing for ages, but she's only 23 and she has a lot of time ahead of her to keep improving. She has this natural power that she is developing. She is even more powerful than any other player, in my view. I believe she can become a top‑20 player in this tournament. She beat Daniela and Jankovic, and the toughest match was against McHale. Wozniacki really had to pull out an extraordinary match to be able to beat her. Wozniak is still young, and she will keep improving. Q. You were talking about the record here. I believe in 2008 you reached 174,000. What was it in 2010? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Yes, the best year was 2008 with 174,000. 2010 was 172,000, and this year it's 150,000. Q. So can we say that there will be a lack of money because you dedicate the money to tennis development? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Absolutely not. Do not say that, because the other women tournaments will kill you. This year we earned more money than in 2010 with 10 million. All that money is dedicated to developing tennis and in particular tennis among the youngest with the start of the National Centre and all our activities to promote our sport, like, for example, mini tennis that we did in the Olympic Stadium. This year our goal was 10.9 million, and we didn't reach that but we are not that far. Q. Seeing the weather on Thursday evening with that very dark sky and the awful weather forecast for the next days, are you relieved that you are able to play the final today? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: We were just talking with the WTA supervisor as saying that we were extremely lucky to be able to play the semifinals yesterday and the final today. We only lost one session. We did schedule some doubles matches indoors, though. We were so lucky to be able to finish that match of Wozniacki Saturday night, because it was raining before she started and it started raining a minute after she finished. Q. And what are Toronto's results? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: They are good results, too. When Federer and Nadal pulled out, the bookings slowed down a little, but in the end it turned out well. In fact, both tournaments are a great help to achieving our mission, which is to develop the sport. This enabled us to go and ask for the help of international specialists like Louis Borfiga and Nathalie Tauziat, among others. We are also helping Milos Raonic. Of course, this is the top of the pyramid, but we are also doing a lot for the bases with this National Centre, and many activities we are doing for children under 12. That same kind of thing has been done in Toronto, and we are starting a center in Vancouver. We also want to do that in the west of the country and Laurentides. Also, we are trying to have tennis enter into the schools so that children can learn tennis more easily. So overall, we are very happy with the results of both tournaments. Q. So those two tournaments were twinned since last year. Are you able to live with that? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Well, before we were talking a lot about it, and now we're just doing it. Here people asked for watching matches in Toronto, and it was very easily done. The screens were in a better position this year. There was a real interaction with Toronto. Journalists were able to ask questions to the players in Toronto. Everything is done now in a very natural way. So I think we now learned how to live with those two tournaments. TV‑wise, in Quebec, the audience has not decreased. Q. So how will the dates of this tournament be for the next Olympics? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: I believe the 25th of July there will be the Canada tournaments, then there will be a week in Cincinnati, and the next Friday Rio will start. Basically nothing is official yet, but what we are trying to do is have this tournament on the 25th of July. What the men players don't want is to have Canada, then the Olympics, and then Cincinnati. But in both cases, we will be fine. I believe Cincinnati will be more affected than we will be. But as I said, no decision has been made. We are talking about the ITF, with the WTA, us, and Cincinnati. Q. Did you hear Milos is now a top‑20 player? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Well, we did expect that. We already thought he would be able to do that last year just before he got injured in Wimbledon. You will see him play at the Davis Cup here on the Banque Nationale court against South Africa. The dates are the 14th to 16th of September. It's going to be an interesting tie against a country who has a similar team to ours with one very good player with a big serve and a second player ranked like ours. Q. We heard you did something special for the players playing the final today. EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Yes, they have a private jet waiting for them on Montreal airport. Whatever time they will finish the match, that plane will be waiting. That was part of our agreement with the WTA in order to have them sleep in Cincinnati tonight. THE MODERATOR: Questions in English, please. Q. You paid for that? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Yes. Actually, we have a donor that offered it to us. Q. Can I ask you just this week how much did going up against the Olympics hurt you? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Yeah, well, going up against the Olympics hurt us I think in terms of the attendance maybe preferring to watch on television. We saw that in the participation of the ladies. At least on paper it didn't seem to affect it so much until Sharapova withdrew saying that it was not because of the Olympics, it was illness, and that's it. And Azarenka, she didn't say that it was ‑‑it's a heavy schedule for everybody. It was probably even more so this year. The doctor told me that Azarenka's knee was a situation that was going for many weeks, many, many weeks, and her just keeping playing on it. She has to go at some point. So it's a heavy schedule, but we did the best we could with that schedule with the player participation. I think on the people watching maybe on television, it must have hurt seeing the games, the tennis game on television the week before. You see plenty of tennis. But the worst was really no comparison. It's the weather. I mean, there's nothing you can do against a rainy day. Nobody wants to go to the park. That's just pure and simple. Q. So the weather was more of a factor than the Olympics? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: Oh, definitely. Definitely. Q. So you're saying 150,000 for the week roughly. Is that good or bad? EUGÈNE LAPIERRE: I think it's good considering we took away one complete session on Friday that we couldn't play. So these numbers are not considered in there. I think it's good. I think it's already, if you take our own record, 150 would be a world record for the women's week, so I think that's very impressive. I still think that Montreal is going to take maybe a few years to build the woman's product back. If we get the top players like we do on the men's side, Montreal is going to make the same success out of the women's event as we do on the men's side. I am convinced of that. We like to watch women's tennis, but we like to watch the top girls, as well. In a few years, if not like two years from now, we will be expecting our own players to do very good and to go further in the tournament, as some of them did this year. So stay tuned for the women's year in a few years from now. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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