Tennis player Fabien Reboul kisses fellow pro Maxence Broville and says ‘love pushed him to it’
French tennis players Fabien Reboul and Maxence Broville kissed in an image shared on Instagram. (Instagram/@fabienreboul/@maxence_broville
French tennis player Fabien Reboul has posted photos of himself kissing fellow pro Maxence Broville.
Posted on his Instagram Story on Monday (5 December), Fabien Reboul, who is 54th in the doubles tennis world rankings, captioned the photo: “I did not fall in love with you, your love pushed me to it”.
Another photo posted by Broville, seemingly in the immediate moments before or after, has the pair staring at each other, sitting side-by-side with an arm around one another.
Neither player has ever previously come out as LGBTQ+. At the time of writing they haven’t commented any further.
If the pictures are confirmation that the pair are in a relationship, this would make Fabien Reboul and Maxence Broville the first active LGBTQ+ players in men’s elite tennis.
Men’s sports are notorious for a lack of openly LGBTQ+ professional athletes.
However, the numbers are increasing with the likes of Australian basketballer Isaac Humphries coming out last month, baseball player Solomon Bates coming out in August, and footballer Josh Cavallo coming out in 2021.
The lack of openly LGBTQ+ players in men’s tennis is a stark difference to the women’s game, where legend Billie Jean King was the first prominent openly homosexual professional athlete.
Other women’s world number ones Martina Navratilova and Amelie Mauresmo also came out while still playing.
Earlier this year there was outrage when footballer Iker Casillas pretended to come out as gay on Twitter.
The retired Spain and Real Madrid goalkeeper made headlines when he tweeted: “I hope you respect me: I’m gay”.
Shortly afterwards, his former teammate Carles Puyol added fuel to the fire when he replied: “It’s time to tell our story, Iker”, alongside a heart emoji.
However, it wasn’t long before both players deleted their tweets, and Casillas told his followers that his account had been hacked.
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