BREAKING NEWS: Alizé Cornet debuts ‘Why you say vamos?’ T-shirt in honor of 34-year-old Olympics gold medalist and Italy’s BJK Cup win
The recently-retired Frenchwoman took her own top prize for the way in which she honored her one-time rival’s latest accomplishment.
Consider the hatchet buried! Italy might be the Billie Jean King Cup champions, but Alizé Cornet took her own top prize for the way in which she honored her one-time rival Sara Errani’s latest accomplishment.
Led by Jasmine Paoliniand supported by Lucia Bronzetti and Errani throughout the week, Italy’s final 2-0 victory over Slovakia on Thursday gave the country its first Billie Jean King Cup since 2013, a team that Errani, now 37 years old, was also a part of. But 2013 also saw a famous moment for Errani with Cornet, as it was the year that they two crossed paths in one of the most viral moments in modern tennis. That summer at the Rogers Cup in Canada, the Italian famously admonished the Frenchwoman mid-match for cheering in Spanish rather than her native French.
“Why you say ‘Vamos’? Say ‘Allez!’,” the Italian jawed across the net, accusing Cornet of mocking her in a fleeting moment that has lived on in perpetuity, and occasionally imitated by never-quite-duplicated, since. Post-match after her 7-5, 7-6(3) victory, the Italian piled on, saying that Cornet’s patented histrionics weren’t a “good thing for our sport.”
“Sometimes she do this, and I just want to try to stay focus and not thinking about her,” Errani said of Cornet’s flair for the dramatics, “but sometimes it’s tough because is really near match, a lot of tension.”
But time heals all wounds, or so they say: The pair never really addressed the spat much in the years since, but after Italy’s victory, Cornet unearthened it in the most epic of ways. She debuted a T-shirt emblazoned with Errani’s quote as a means of celebrating her and her teammates.