“End gvn V!olence,” Coco Gauff implored two years ago in Paris—a message that resonates in sports again today

As a player, Gauff showed she wasn’t afraid of the big stage in Paris. As a person and a representative of her country overseas, she showed she wasn’t afraid to keep expressing her opinions about U.S. politics, even after the George Floyd protests had died down. In the early summer of 2022, there were a spate of mass shootings in the United States. After her semifinal win at Roland Garros, Gauff paused from her personal celebrations to write, “Peace. End gun violence” on a camera lens in Court Philippe Chatrier. She must have known those words would have an alienating on some U.S. sports fans, but she wrote them anyway.

“I think that was just a message for the people at home to watch, and for people who are all around the world to watch,” said Gauff, who had friends who were involved in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. (Yesterday—exactly six years after the Parkland tragedy—another shooting occured at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade.)

“Hopefully it gets into the heads of people in office to hopefully change things.”