ERT television station fired veteran commentator Dimosthenis Karmiris for making racist remarks towards table tennis player Jeoung Young-sik on July 27.
Veteran commentator and journalist Dimosthenis Karmiris made comments on the live broadcast of the match between Jeoung Young-sik (South Korea) and Panagiotis Gionis (Greece) in the third round of men’s singles tennis at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on July 27th.
“Koreans can’t play ping-pong. I don’t understand how their eyes can perceive the ball traveling back and forth despite their little eye size”, Karmiris smiled as he stated.
Hours later, ERT announced that Karmiris had been fired. “Racist comments have no place on television. The partnership between ERT and Dimosthenis Karmiris officially ended today, right after this morning’s recording.”
Korean athlete Jeoung beat Gionis 3-2 to advance to the 16th round. The scores of the sets are 7-11, 11-7, 8-11, 10-12, 12-10, 11-6, 14-12. Jeoung then went on to beat Germany’s Timo Boll, before losing to Zhendong Fan in the quarterfinals.
