Too high, too fast? “Sometimes I think to myself that I would have preferred not to have won the US Open”, confided Emma Raducanu in an interview with the English daily The Times. 21 months after her incredible victory in New York, the 20-year-old Briton is still struggling to regain the level of her summer of 2021.
She was only 18 when she won at Flushing Meadows after an unlikely run, coming out of three qualifying rounds to enter the main draw, sweeping all her opponents by not conceding a single set in ten matches. Raducanu had never won a single tournament on the main circuit. Her prize list has since remained stuck in this single title, prestigious but placing on her disproportionate expectations that her body and her mind have paid for.
Absent at Roland-Garros, also package for WImbledon
Falling back to 128th in the world, with a round of 16 loss in March at Indian Wells as the best result this season, she has accumulated injuries, changed coaches several times. Recently operated on an ankle and a wrist, she could not line up at Roland-Garros and will not be able to play the Wimbledon tournament next month (from July 3 to 16).
“Since then, I have suffered many setbacks, one after another. I’m resilient, I tolerate a lot of things, but it’s not easy,” she admitted to The Times. If she therefore admits that she would sometimes prefer never to have won this US Open 2021, she is also trying to use this coronation to bounce back. “I’m like, ‘Remember that feeling, that promise. »
With her unprecedented victory – never before in the Open era has a player emerging from qualifications won a Grand Slam tournament – Emma Raducanu has become one of the sportswomen most sought after by sponsors. The Briton born in Canada to a Romanian father and a Chinese mother is under contract with Nike, Porsche, Vodafone and Dior. But she says she had to grow up very quickly on the circuit to not just serve as a “piggy bank”.
“There are a lot of sharks”
“The circuit is absolutely brutal,” she adds. “What I’ve come to understand over the past two years is that the circuit and everything that comes with it is not a very friendly, safe environment. »
“You have to be on your guard because there are a lot of sharks. I think people in the industry, especially because I was 19, now 20, see me as a piggy bank. It was difficult to navigate these waters. I burned myself several times, I learned, learned to keep a circle around me as restricted as possible. “Like what, clichés are sometimes good: the hardest thing is not necessarily to reach the top, but to stay there.