Nick Kyrgios has added fuel to his long-running row with Australian Olympic legend Dawn Fraser, labelling her “racist” in a tweet after she was honoured by the Queen.
Fraser, 80, who won four Olympic swimming gold medals for Australia, was honoured on the Queen’s birthday with a Companion of the Order of Australia.
“I’m so very grateful that I’m Australian and I’ve been given this honour by the governor-general, it’s just absolutely fantastic,” Fraser said speaking about her honour on Sunrise, which was shared on their Twitter page.
Kyrgios retweeted the tweet and wrote, “Racist tho [sic]”, reigniting a bitter feud between the pair that began over two years ago.
The pair made headlines in 2015 after Fraser launched a scathing attack on Kyrgios after his quarterfinal loss to Richard Gasquet at Wimbledon and picked on his Greek and Malaysian heritage.
Speaking on the Today Show, Fraser said that Kyrgios and fellow tennis player Bernard Tomic, whose father is Croatian, should pick up their act or “go back to where their fathers or parents came from”.
“They should be setting a better example for the younger generation of this country, a great country of ours,” Fraser told Karl Stefanovic at the time.
“If they don’t like it, go back to where their fathers or their parents came from. We don’t need them here in this country to act like that.”
Read more: Nick Kyrgios calls Dawn Fraser a racist
Kyrgios responded to her comment in a since deleted tweet. “Throwing a racket, brat. Debating the rules, disrespectful. Frustrated when competing, spoilt. Showing emotion, arrogant. Blatant racist, Australian legend,” he wrote.
But Fraser defended her comments in an interview with Fairfax Media, insisting there was no racist tone to what she had said. “I’m not a racist person, if you take it that way then I’m sorry that you take it that way, but I’m not racist at all,” she said.
Kyrgios’ latest tweet was met with a wave of support from fans and had received more than 4,000 likes at the time of publishing. Fraser is yet to respond.