Tennis: War and motherhood sidelined Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina but she’s ready to return

Elina Svitolina playing in the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium in March 2022. USA Today Sports

NEW YORK – Elina Svitolina, the most successful Ukrainian women’s tennis player in history, has not played tennis in 10 months.

She is a new mother – her daughter, Skai, was born in October – and Svitolina is, like many prominent Ukrainians, a crusader, focused on raising money and awareness for her embattled country.

Based in Switzerland with her husband, French tennis star Gael Monfils, she has sensed that the wider world is losing interest in the conflict with Russia.

“Here in Europe, a couple of times, people came up to me and asked if there is still war going on in Ukraine,” she said.

“This was very, very sad for me to hear. I have close friends and family back in Ukraine, and I know what they are going through.”

When hope and energy run low, she thinks of her 85-year-old grandmother Tamara, still in Odesa, Ukraine, the vibrant, strategically vital port on the Black Sea where Svitolina was born and lived in her early years.

“The winter is very tough right now for Ukrainians,” Svitolina said.

“Obviously, it’s very cold, and they are often without electricity and running water. My grandmother lives on the 13th floor, and she needs to walk all the way up to her apartment because she cannot use the elevator.

“She could get stuck, or there are no lights at all. I have many friends in different cities, and they tell me the same stories. No lights. No water.”

With her grandmother and her compatriots in mind, Svitolina is using her clout to help keep the power on.

An ambassador for United24, a Ukrainian fundraising platform, she organised a gala event in Monaco in December that raised €170,000 (S$242,900). She said that €57,000 that were raised have been earmarked for the purchase of generators for Ukrainian hospitals.

“Without electricity in the hospitals, they cannot perform some essential surgeries,” she said.

“Our goal for the generators is €10 million.”

They have raised €2.9 million so far, she added. “But we need more help.”

Svitolina, ranked as high as No. 3 in 2017, was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2019 and has long been one of the sport’s best movers and counterpunchers.

But she has not played since losing in her opening round of the Miami Open last March. Newly pregnant and reeling emotionally after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she said she realised she could not continue to compete.

She spent days drained or in tears and has worked with a psychologist and leaned on Monfils and her family.

“I didn’t touch a racket for seven months,” she said.

“I wanted to switch off from tennis. I had maybe too much because of what happened in the end of February. The tournaments I played were probably too much for me mentally, so I was really happy to switch off completely. Right now, for me the goal is to come back, but I’m sure I won’t regret that I took this time off.”

Svitolina and Monfils were married in 2021 and are one of the game’s power couples. But Monfils missed much of last season with foot and heel injuries.

Both are targeting comebacks in 2023.

Monfils, 36, has often talked about his desire to play until age 40, but as a new father, he has shortened that timeline. He now plans to continue at least until the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Svitolina would like nothing better than to win a medal for Ukraine in those Games.

But Svitolina, who only recently resumed training, is not planning on a quick return even if the back problems that troubled her before her hiatus are resolved for now.

“I will try to be ready for the summer, but I try not to rush things,” she said.

“Because I know I need to be very strong to be back on tour, because right now, tennis is very physical. After not playing for over seven months and not doing so much after pregnancy, of course, your body is different now.”

At 28, she certainly has time in a sport where more players are competing deep into their 30s and where more women also have made successful returns from childbirth, including Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka and Serena Williams.

“I’m sure that they worked extremely hard to get back where they were, and some of them are even better,” Svitolina said.

“So that certainly gives me hope and motivation I can do the same.” NYTIMES

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