Rybakinová made her mark in the history of tennis: Slovakia also played a part in her great success!
BRATISLAVA – She entered the competition at the All England Club as a player ranked third in the world and was not one of the favorites before the most famous tournament in the world. Jelena Rybakinová turned paper assumptions upside down and won the first Grand Slam title in her career.
In the Wimbledon singles final, she defeated the third-seeded Tunisian Ons Jabeur in the tournament’s top 12 position and became the first ever Kazakh champion of one of the big four events.
Few people know about the Moscow-born woman with a Kazakh passport that Slovakia also played a role in her success in life. Specifically known tDominika Cibulkova Enis Academy Love4Tennis.
It was 2019 and the talented tennis player was looking for a new coach who could help her in further performance and ranking growth. The choice fell on the Croatian Stefan Vukov, former professional player and later coach of Tereza Mihalíková.
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Vukov worked at the Love4Tennis academy in Bratislava, where he was in charge of children. However, you can’t do anything to the offer of a promising tennis player.
“Stefano Vukov trained children with us before he agreed with her. Jelena was in the second hundred of the ranking.” She came to see him at the academy and used all our services,” said former Slovak tennis player Dominika Cibulková.
Nice and modest girl
The cooperation proved successful, and the thirty-five-year-old coach took 184 hundreds of world leaders from the second ranking to absolutely absolutely. In January of this year, she was ranked twelfth, currently she is in the 23rd position of the WTA rankings.
In addition to the Wimbledon trophy, she has two tournament titles from Bucharest 2019 and Hobart 2020. She narrowly missed out on a medal at last year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, when she lost to Ukraine’s Jelina Svitolina in the match for third place.
“Jelena is a very nice and modest girl. She was like that in the beginning, when she came to us, but also later, when she was already achieving great success and worked her way into the elite twenty. She was still the same and we all like her very much because she is normal.”
In our academy, we also want to teach tennis players that a person cannot change with increasing success. Jelena is a perfect example. She is quiet, but when you get to know her, you will find that she is very nice. She hasn’t changed and I believe that she will remain as she is and that we will soon see her at the academy.” she spared no words of praise for the naturalized Kazakh finalist of the Australian Open 2014.
Rybakinová, who admires the Swiss Switzerland has Roger Federer, tennis player on the London grass the development of the final for the first time in sixteen years. The last time a similar feat was accomplished in 2006 was the Frenchwoman Amélia Mauresmová. She lost just two sets en route to a lifetime achievement and became the sixth different Wimbledon champion in a row.
At the same time, she is the 23rd winner of the prestigious tournament in the so-called open era and the youngest queen of the grass Grand Slam since Petra Kvitova’s triumph in 2011.
“She lacked confidence during tournaments and Grand Slams, but now she had it. She played aggressively and went for the win. That’s who she is. If she wanted to succeed, she had to play exactly like this. Jabeurová is an unpredictable player, she tries to break your tennis with different shortcuts and rhythm changes .
I am glad that Jelena did not give up, she maintained her level and beat her with a constantly aggressive game. She kept everything she was supposed to,” added Dominika Cibulková.
- the author: © List/Patrik Seman
- Instagram/love4tennis_cibulkova_academy; VIDEO: YouTube/Wimbledon
- Source: Sports shoes