‘Shot me in the back’: Elina Svitolina’s cruel injury sparks delicious

Elina Svitolina has long established herself as one of the best players in the world. At the peak of her powers, scaling as high as No 3, Svitolina won numerous titles, beating nearly every prominent player and carving out a brilliant career for herself.

But she has never seemed as dangerous in the grand slam tournaments as in the past eight months since her return from maternity leave. Svitolina’s tennis was always too defensive against the best players in the biggest tournaments, but she returned determined to seize the moment and play with more bravery.

After a spectacular comeback season last year, Svitolina landed in the chaotic half of the Australian Open draw with a clear opportunity to reach her first grand slam final. Instead, within minutes of her fourth round match, Svitolina’s hopes were gone.

Three games into her contest with Linda Noskova, Svitolina was forced to retire with a back injury while trailing 0-3.

“I feel like I was doing everything right,” said Svitolina. “I had a good off-season. I’ve been training really well. Yeah, it’s just things like this unexpectedly happen. It’s not like a buildup where I had a huge pain in my back and I expected this one. It really came out of nowhere.”

Last year, Svitolina returned after giving birth to her daughter, Skaï, in incredible form. After a rousing run to the quarter-finals of the French Open in her first grand slam tournament back, she immediately followed it up with the best grand slam run of her career, defeating Iga Świątek en-route to the Wimbledon semi-finals.

The 29-year-old had returned not only from burnout and maternity leave, but as a prominent public figure in her country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the end of the season, Svitolina was crowned the WTA Comeback Player of the Year.

Even after Svitolina had been forced to prematurely end her season due to a stress fracture in her ankle, all evidence suggested she had returned at the start of the new season in top form.

She began by reaching the final in Auckland before narrowly losing a great three set match to Coco Gauff. She started the Australian Open full of confidence and after three rounds; as the top seeds fell around her, Svitolina had conceded just 13 games.

One game into her fourth round against Noskova, all of her efforts to prepare herself for a deep run had come to nothing as she experienced one of the cruel realities of elite sports – injury.

At the end of a lengthy opening game on her serve against Noskova, Svitolina felt sharp, shooting pains in her back. She took a medical time out after the next game and then, when she realised she simply could not serve, she was forced to retire.

An hour later, despite the tears welling in her eyes, she explained at length her surprise and frustration at an injury that had…