With a Wimbledon Title, Elena Rybakina Finally Cracks a Smile

“I didn’t choose where I was born,” she said. “People believed in me. Kazakhstan supported me so much. Even today, I heard so much support. I saw the flags, so I don’t know how to answer these questions.”

She is hardly the first tennis player to take the funding and amenities and choose to represent another country. (Britain has had plenty of imports, including the former Canadian star Greg Rusedski and the former Australian Johanna Konta.)

Rybakina is hardly the first Russian tennis player to take the funding and amenities and choose to represent Kazakhstan. Yaroslava Shvedova switched in 2008 and later won the Wimbledon women’s doubles title and also became the only player in the Open era to complete a so-called golden set at a Grand Slam tournament, winning all 24 points of the first set against Sara Errani in a third-round victory, 6-0, 6-4, at Wimbledon.

“It was good for my career,” said Shvedova of the switch. “When I was in Russia, I was around the No. 10 player, but when I moved to Kazakhstan I was the No. 1 player. I get goose bumps thinking about it, but I knew I had to do good and work hard because I was the leader and everyone was watching me.”

Shvedova, 34, is retired and working with player development in Kazakhstan. She was at Wimbledon to support Rybakina on Saturday. So was Bulat Utemuratov, the billionaire president of the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation.

“To be honest, we’ve always been underdogs, anyone coming from Eastern Europe,” said Stefano Vukov, Rybakina’s coach, who is Croatian. “We’ve always had to fight against windmills to break through. It’s not as easy as for other federations from other countries. Thank God the Kazakhstan federation has been supporting her.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/sports/tennis/wimbledon-elena-rybakina-russia.html