Since the outbreak of military clashes between Russia and Ukraine on Feb. 24, two Ukrainian tennis players have attracted widespread attention.
The first is Ukrainian men's player Sergiy Stakhovsky, who currently ranks 240 in attp and lives in Hungary with three children under the age of 7 with his wife. The 36-year-old father, who lied to his children about going out to play on the tennis tour, has now returned to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, to join the Ukrainian Reserve to resist the attack of Russian troops.
Stakhovsky played at the Australian Open in Melbourne in January, and on the right is him in a military uniform on the streets of Ukraine.
The second was Ukrainian women's Dayana Yastremska. In contrast to Sergey, who returned to Ukraine, 21-year-old Dayana fled Ukraine with the help of her father and took her 15-year-old sister to France for the WTA250 Lyon race.
Dayana reached the final by winning four consecutive singles matches in Lyon, her fifth final since turning professional in 2019. It is expected that at 10 o'clock Beijing time tonight, he will compete with mainland player Zhang Shuai for the championship of this tournament.
At 2:30 a.m. Beijing time today, Dayana defeated Romanian player Costia in the semi-finals 7-6 (5) 4-6 6-4. After a slash-and-shoot victory on the double counter-attack, Dayana fell to her knees to celebrate the victory.
"Because of your support, I'm still here and I've won." Dayana said to the audience.
Ahead of this semi-final, Dayana was asked by reporters how she "felt mentally strong enough to be able to play with all this going on." ”
Dayana replied, "Well, when I first got here, I tried to find ways to control my emotions... But you know, it's very difficult because... My heart remained in Ukraine, my mind fighting on the pitch. ”
Dayana added that she has a "responsibility" to succeed in tennis, explaining: "It's the only thing I've done really well. This is our future. It was an opportunity for us and I had to manage myself to strike a balance. I know I'm not going to stop being nervous, and I know I'm going to have a lot of emotions. But I have to do it, and I'm trying to find ways to make myself less nervous and less emotional. But you know, anyway, I'm still working on the pitch... Fight for every ball and work hard to achieve what I really want. ”
On February 25, the day after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, Dayana described on her personal social media how she was "awakened by a bomb" in Odessa.
"After last week's race in Dubai, we decided to go home for a few days because I had a little bit of a small injury to my leg. I also want to spend time with my family. We had a ticket to Lyon, France, where I received an invitation to participate. We were scheduled to leave on February 24th. It was then that Odessa was bombed. The explosion was shocking. We hid in the building's underground car park and waited and spent two nights there. It's really scary. By that time, flights had been cancelled, Ukraine had completely closed its airspace and the war had begun.
"I witnessed the war with my own eyes, I heard those explosions, how terrible it was. When I saw the missile explode, I shuddered. You don't know where they're going to fall, you don't know what to do, and everyone panics and tries to hide in the basement to survive. There are a lot of kids, single women... This is so unreal! ”
After two nights in the underground parking lot, Dayana's parents decided to send her and her sister out of Ukraine at all costs. Dayana posted a video on social media of her sister taking a boat from the Danube to Romania and then rushing to Lyon, France.
Three days later, Dayana took her sister to a doubles match in Lyon, wearing a Ukrainian flag. After reaching the player's seat, Dayana spread the flag on the small coffee table, and the attentive sister found that the flag obscured the advertiser logo printed on the coffee table, so she folded the flag and leaked the advertiser's logo. This small gesture won applause from the audience, with one comment writing: "None of them want to offend at this special moment." ”
The sisters lost 2-6 4-6 to a doubles pair from Spain and Switzerland. After that, her sister Dayana focused on singles matches, and she beat Romania's Bogdan 3-6 7-6 (7) 7-6 (7) in the first round. Next, Dayana defeated both opponents 2-0 to reach the semifinals.
In the semi-finals, Dayana won the first set with a snatch of seven, and lost 4-6 in the second set. In the decider, Dayana broke first in set 2 and was immediately broken by her opponent. Dayana broke again in the 4th set, and then each side saved to bring the set to 5-3, and Dayana came to her own serve to win the set.
In the 9th set, Dayana missed 3 match points, dodged 2 break points, and was eventually broken by her opponent on the 3rd break point.
"In the third set, when I got the match point but lost my own serve to win the game, I was a little crazy. I thought, 'I'm done, I'm losing' because I don't have more strength. Then everyone supported me, supported me, and I said to myself, you can do it! ”。
In the final 10th set, Dayana won the match point again at 40-30, and she sealed the victory with a double backslash.
"When I posted photos of me leaving home on social media, I received a lot of messages from France and around the world. But when I got here, I didn't expect to get so much support. ”
At 10 o'clock Beijing time tonight, Dayana will compete with Zhang Shuai for the championship of the ATP250 Lyon station. Both Zhang Shuai and Dayana reached the Tour singles final for the fifth time, after Zhang Shuai won two titles (Guangzhou in 2013 and 2017) and Dayana won three titles (Hong Kong 2018, Hua Hin and Strasbourg in 2019).
Zhang Shuai and Dayana have met twice before, and in the 2018 Hong Kong semi-finals, Dayana defeated Zhang Shuai 7-5 6-4, and then won her first tour title in the final. Zhang Shuai defeated Dayana 6-4 1-6 6-2 in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2019.
Fans are advised to pay attention to this final. (Source: Tennis House Author: Yun Cirrus Yunshu)
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