One of the biggest tournaments in all of tennis, the iconic French Open, recently wrapped up and for the second time in her career Coco Gauff came out on top in the women's competition.
Gauff, who is Black, celebrated by dedicating her victory to "Americans who look like me" and said she wants to bring "hope and light" to Black Americans, especially in these difficult times.
Her emotional win was celebrated with tons of photos of her posing with the tournament's prize cup, an ornate silver trophy that is presented to the winner each year.
And you might assume she got to take it back home with her to the States. But as she revealed in a TikTok, that's not how it works.
Instead, she got a hilariously tiny replica.
Gauff filmed the TikTok on her flight home from Paris, and placed it beside a pottle of Perrier for reference. The trophy is definitely bigger than a Perrier bottle! But... not by much.
She told her followers:
“This is the one we take home. It’s like a mini replica of the trophy. It’s…really small.”
She then quipped:
“But, you know, it’s the memories that matter the most.”
Of course, the prize money helps—CBS Sports reports Gauff is also taking home somewhere around $2.89 million from her huge win against top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus.
The tiny cup is standard practice at all the Grand Slam tournaments, which also include Wimbledon, the Australian Open and the U.S. Open.
Nevertheless, people online couldn't help but laugh at what many people referred to as a "sippy cup" trophy.
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For Gauff, this win is about so much more than prizes. As she told media after her big victory:
"It means a lot and obviously there's a lot going on in our country right now."
"But just to be able to be a representation of that and a representation of, I guess, people that look like me in America who maybe don't feel as supported during this time period, and so just being that reflection of hope and light for those people."
No trophy, whether it's huge or sippy-cup size, could ever compete with that.
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