Elina Svitolina
Elina Svitolina · Sports
Ukrainian tennis champion, winner of the 2018 WTA Finals, world No. 3 and Ukraine's first Olympic tennis medallist
12 septembre 1994, Odessa, Ukraine
Odessa, Kharkiv, Monaco
Elina Svitolina is recognized among Jewish contributors to Sports — Ukrainian tennis champion, winner of the 2018 WTA Finals, world No. 3 and Ukraine's first Olympic tennis medallist
Origins and early life
Elina Svitolina was born in Odesa on 12 September 1994, the daughter of a wrestler and a rower, and was largely raised by her grandmother Tamara, who is Jewish — a fact Svitolina stated herself, plainly and at length, in a 2022 interview with the Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon, and which the international press has since repeated; this fiche records that one grandparent and nothing more.
Work and career
She won the junior title at Roland-Garros in 2010, her first WTA title in Baku in 2013, and climbed through the 2017 season, with victories in Dubai, Rome and Toronto, to third place in the world rankings, the highest a Ukrainian player had ever reached. In 2018 she won the WTA Finals in Singapore, beating Sloane Stephens in the final without dropping a set all week; in 2019 she reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon and the US Open, and at the Tokyo Olympics of 2021 she won the bronze medal, the first Olympic medal in tennis in Ukraine's history.
Recognition
After Russia's invasion of her country in February 2022 she became one of its most visible athletes, donating her prize money, raising funds through her foundation for the children of Ukraine, and refusing to shake hands with Russian and Belarusian opponents; she returned from the birth of her daughter in 2023 to win in Strasbourg and reach the Wimbledon semi-finals once more. She is married to the French player Gaël Monfils.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/sports/tennis/elina-svitolina-ukraine.html
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Ukrainian tennis champion, winner of the 2018 WTA Finals, world No. 3 and Ukraine's first Olympic tennis medallist
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/sports/tennis/elina-svitolina-ukraine.html
