At 4:42 p.m. in London, Elina Svitolina (28) finally breaks the seams of Iga Swiatek, the number 1 in the world, breaks the seams of everything, as she stands in the Wimbledon semifinals, and the popular fan wonders:
-Where does Svitolina come from?
(…)
Skaï Monfils was born in October last year.
He has not completed the year.
Is the hija of Gaël Monfils y Elina Svitolina.
The tennis lover will have heard of Monfils (36). He is a long French puncher, the best junior of his time, a year younger than Nadal, the great hope of French tennis, the one who has been waiting for 40 years for the successor to Yannick Noah, the last French winner in a Grand Slam (the unforgettable Roland Garros of 1983, so celebrated in this last edition, when a mural was discovered and a superb merchandising exercise was displayed).
Just like Gilles Simon, Richard Gasquet or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Monfils has stayed halfway through his tennis career and today he is the 318th in the world, a semi-retired tennis player who spends his time in Paris with his daughter Skaï while contemplating the exploits of his wife, the child’s mother, Elina Svitolina.
The hope of the family, therefore, remains in the hands of Svitolina, the woman who fights against everything (she is the 78th in the world; she had been the third in 2017), against the recent servitudes of her pregnancy (and maternity) and against the consequences of the war, because she is Ukrainian and feels Ukrainian, and that is why she denies the greeting to her Russian and Belarusian rivals (at Roland Garros she denied it to Aryna Sabalenka; at Wimbledon, in the round of 16, to Victoria Azarenka).
And when they ask him about his rudeness, he always answers:
I don’t know what they expect of me. I have been very clear in my arguments about not greeting each other. If Belarusian tennis players don’t position themselves against the war, I don’t know why I have to greet them.
(Her position has earned her boos, she has even suffered them at Roland Garros, which in other times idolized her Parisian husband so much).
Swiatek, the latest victim of the grown Svitolina (she has another semifinal at Wimbledon, in 2019), does feel a connection with the Ukrainian, and that is why she usually wears Ukrainian motifs in her dress, without going any further, a blue and yellow bow in the cap
And for this reason, in recent days, Swiatek has said:
I’ve heard that after World War II the Germans, Japanese and Italians weren’t allowed to compete, and I think this sort of thing would show the Russian government that it might not be worth it. I know it’s a small thing: as we are athletes, we are only a small part. But I feel that sport is quite important and sport has always been used in propaganda.
That doesn’t mean she’s going to give Svitolina anything, so the Pole sinks into her thoughts as she drops the first set, opens her notebook and jots down notes between breaks, then pushes herself into the second-set tie-break. She wins it, and keeps the tension going until the third set, when it rains again on Southfields and the retractable roof comes up and she finally collapses and watches as Svitolina accelerates and heads towards her second semifinal in London.
Then, they both embrace on the grass of the Center Court, the two of them do, while the parish is moved.
Let there be peace and then peace.
