A man in Greece on Tuesday said he needed stitches after allegedly being bitten by the family dog of tennis star Stefanos Tsitsipas.
The 71-year-old claims he was attacked outside a cafeteria in the coastal Athens suburb of Vouliagmeni on Monday.
“It felt like a bear bite… It ripped through my trousers,” the man, whose name was not published, told news portal NewsIT.
“Blood was flowing and I fell to the sidewalk,” he said. Bystanders helped him up and one of them took him to hospital.
The man said he had identified Tsitsipas’s mother, Julia Salnikova, as the owner of the dog, which was on a leash.
“We know them, they’ve lived in Vouliagmeni for years,” he said.
“She took the dog away and swore at me,” he added.
A police statement said the man had filed a complaint against Russia-born Salnikova, who represented the Soviet Union as a tennis player in the 1980s.
Greece’s top male tennis prospect and a former world number three, Tsitsipas, 26, is currently ranked 19 globally. He lives full-time in Monaco.
Source: AFP
