The meeting between Elena Rybakina and Jelena Ostapenko on Friday, as part of the semi-finals of the WTA tournament in Rome, offered a sad spectacle.
Very fit for a few weeks, Jelena Ostapenko hoped to take advantage of her good momentum to try to upset Elena Rybakina. She also has her advantage for many months already, the Kazakh finalist of the last Australian Open held her rank and even had her opponent unpinned. In the middle of the semi-final between the two young women on Friday evening on clay at the WTA 1000 tournament in Rome, Ostapenko insulted his opponent.
In any case, this is what relays RMC Saturday and what Stefano Vukov, Rybakina’s coach, said, who said that his protege’s opponent had thrown him a “Fucking b***” (“Sale p***”, in flowery French) . Images of the coach explaining this to his entourage have also confirmed it.
Ostapenko calls Rybakina « f*cking b*tch » while she is not looking (Penko timely changed her mind and wanted to play in heavy rain and Elena considered it dangerous).Rybakina looks puzzled to her coach who tells her not to worry.She grins because I only support the correct people pic.twitter.com/3SxrOZwVcO
— Lydia Rebel (@lidia_rebel) May 20, 2023
The episode between the two players in any case took place in the middle of the second set. With Ostapenko leading 4-2, Rybakina called for the match to be interrupted due to rain having started.
Maybe the reason of this talk was that. Stefano said that Penko called Elena bitch. pic.twitter.com/1q2UCoGkE3
— Black girl (@Black_GazaQ) May 20, 2023
Winning comeback for Rybakina
Not to the taste of her opponent who would have insulted her discreetly, without any image being able to prove it. However, Rybakina’s reaction clearly showed that something had happened since the Kazakh turned to her coach several times, looking a little bewildered. Returning from the interlude, the winner of Wimbledon 2022 won four games in a row, and the match with it. (6-2, 6-4).
