Elena Rybakina has become Kazakhstan's first Wimbledon champion, VRKNews.kz reports.
In the final match of the British Open (the Wimbledon tournament) in London, Kazakhstani and Kazakhstan team leader Elena Rybakina met the representative of Tunisia and world number two in the WTA ranking, Ons Jabeur.
Rybakina, 23, won a hard-fought victory over world number two Ons Jabeur of Tunisia with a score of 3:6, 6:2, 6:2. The match lasted 1 hour 47 minutes.
A historic victory for Kazakhstan
For the first time a representative of Kazakhstan has won a Wimbledon final.
Kazakhstani tennis player Elena Rybakina played an incredible match in an incredible tournament. In this match too she lost the first set, but managed to pull herself together, read her opponent and leave her practically no chances.
“I've never felt something like this”
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 9, 2022
Believe it, Elena - you're a Wimbledon champion ?#Wimbledon | #CentreCourt100 pic.twitter.com/2p4wPqwxLr
During the match Rybakina served four aces and made three double faults. Elena also won six points and three games in a row.
The fate of the title was decided in the third set. It should be noted here that since 2006 no player who lost the opening set of a final has gone on to take the title. The last such comeback was made by France's Amélie Mauresmo in a match against Belgium's Justine Henin. And now Elena Rybakina has managed to achieve similar success. In the final set she broke at once and, despite all her opponent's efforts, did not give up her advantage.
Rybakina and Jabeur had met three times before. Their last head-to-head match ended early after the Kazakhstani player was forced to retire in the second set. Before that, in Dubai 2021 Ons also won (7:6 (8:6), 4:6, 6:2), and in Wuhan 2019 Elena won — 6:1, 6:7 (3:7), 6:2.
On the way to the final the citizen of Kazakhstan also beat American Coco Vandeweghe, Canadian Bianca Andreescu, Chinese player Zheng Qinwen, Croatian Petra Martic and Australian Ajla Tomljanovic. The victory over 2019 Wimbledon champion Simona Halep in the semi-final was especially spectacular. The experienced Romanian player was beaten in 1 hour 17 minutes.
After the end of the tournament's final match the total of Rybakina's prize money for the whole tournament became known. For each round of Wimbledon that the Kazakhstani reached she will receive a total of two million 333 thousand pounds sterling, plus an additional two million pounds sterling for the win. In all, Elena will receive 4.3 million pounds sterling, which is roughly 2.5 billion tenge.
Why Elena Rybakina is a citizen of Kazakhstan
Elena Rybakina was born in Russia, in Moscow. In 2018 she changed her citizenship to Kazakhstani. Here is what the tennis player herself says about Kazakhstan:
“In Kazakhstan I was helped a great deal. I feel enormous support from people and I am glad to play for Kazakhstan. And it seems to me that my results help sport in Kazakhstan. There they believed in me and did everything possible so that I could play and progress. They provided me with all the conditions for training. Of course, that helped me very much,” Rybakina told Tennis.com.
The Tennis Federation of Russia refused to finance her development. Elena's father, Andrei Rybakin, who worked at NTV-PLUS, asked the Tennis Federation of Russia for help so that Lena could progress, but they refused.
If not for the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation, which believed in her talent, there might never have been an athlete like Lena Rybakina. Yes, she was born in Russia, began playing tennis there and achieved some success at junior level representing Russia. But only the move to Kazakhstan helped her to establish herself as a big, adult tennis player.
For the first time since 1962 two debutantes in Grand Slam title matches played in a Wimbledon final. Since 1975 only one player ranked lower than the representative of Kazakhstan (23rd place) has managed to win Wimbledon. In 2007 American Venus Williams (31) did it.
Recall that last year Wimbledon was won by Australian Ashleigh Barty, who has since retired.
