20-year-old British tennis player Emma Raducanu, inactive on the tour after suffering a series of injuries, admitted that the pressure of high-level sport eventually led to her depression.
British tennis player Emma Raducanu , 20, joined the WTA Tour with everything. On September 11, 2021, she became US Open champion, immediately becoming one of the emerging figures in the sport. However, a series of injuries ended up marginalizing her from the circuit.
Thus, the one who arrived in the top 10 of the classification disappeared from the group of the hundred best, which caused enormous mental wear.
This was acknowledged in an interview with The Times newspaper. “Wish I never won the US Open, wish it didn’t happen “, he admitted. Then he elaborated on this sentence.
“When I lost a match, I was really depressed. I had a lot of pressure to play, people had no idea what was going on and I had to have this facade. . I am very young and I continue to learn and make mistakes. It’s much more difficult when you make mistakes in front of everyone. The tour is completely brutal “, he added.
Raducanu, who has not competed since April after the US Open victory, has not played in the WTA Finals. In addition, after having undergone operations on the ankle and the right wrist, he will not be able to be present at Wimbledon.
“Everything I find along the way, I would dodge so I could experience it, because it’s the best feeling in the world. I promised myself that day. Since then, I have had many relapses, one after another. I’m resilient and my tolerance is high, but it’s not easy “, he counted.
“You have to be on your guard because there are a lot of sharks there . I think people in the industry, especially me because I was 19, now I’m 20, they see me as a piggy bank. It was difficult to navigate these waters and I was burned several times. But I also learned. If you keep your circle as small as possible, that’s how you’ll do best,” he said.
Regarding the surgery on his right hand, he shared that “at the moment I can’t even open bottles or things like that because of my wrists. I was struggling with the physical pain, but the mental side was also very difficult for me. ”.
“I had to grow up very quickly. When I won, I was extremely naive. It’s something that I’ve realized over the past two years, the tour and everything that goes with it, not a very pleasant, reliable and safe space concluded Emma Raducanu.
Kyrgios and his sanity
Another tennis player who has had to deal with the unpleasant side of high competition is Australian Nick Kyrgios. In the documentary Break Point, he said that the worst moment of his career began in 2019, when he fell in the second round of Wimbledon against the Spaniard Rafael Nadal. A defeat that led to a behavioral crisis for the controversial athlete.
“I drank alcohol, took drugs, I distanced myself from my family and loved ones. I lost at Wimbledon and when I woke up my father was crying sitting on my bed “, he pointed.
“This situation was the turning point. I said to myself ‘ok, I can’t go on like this’. I ended up in a psychiatric ward in London to deal with my issues.”
So for him, the moment was so complex that he even tried to take his own life. “If you look closely, you can see the self-harm marks on my right arm. I was thinking of killing myself, I didn’t want to get up and I didn’t want to play “, he confessed.
Track to El Deportivo
Source: Latercera
I’m Rose Brown , a journalist and writer with over 10 years of experience in the news industry. I specialize in covering tennis-related news for Athletistic, a leading sports media website. My writing is highly regarded for its quick turnaround and accuracy, as well as my ability to tell compelling stories about the sport.
