Ukrainian athlete Svitolina wins tennis tournament in France, defeating Russian in final

Ukrainian tennis player Elina Svitolina won the prestigious tournament of the WTA-250 series in Strasbourg. This is her first victory after the birth of a child and maternity leave.

The Tennis Portal reported the news with a link to the WTA Twitter page.

It has been reported that the final of the competition concluded on Saturday, May 27, with the victory of Svitolina over Russian Anna Blinkova, the result of which was a score of 6:2 and 6:3.

At the same time, the Ukrainian beat another representative of the aggressor country, who played under a neutral flag – Varvara Grachova (6th seed): 6:3, 6:4.

This is the second victory of Elina at the tournament in Strasbourg. She did it for the first time in 2020.

Svitolina has 17 WTA singles titles in her career (from 20 finals).

2020 🤝 2023@ElinaSvitolina is a champion in Strasbourg once again!#IS23 pic.twitter.com/IeHYzD0Yfl

— wta (@WTA) May 27, 2023

The current victory will allow the Ukrainian to return to the top 200 of the world ranking. Svitolina returned to competition after maternity leave just eight weeks ago.

Elina became the second Ukrainian this season to win the WTA singles title. Svitolina will donate her prize money won at the tournament, which is about 250,000 dollars, to the needs of the children of Ukraine.

For reference:

Elina Svitolina is a Ukrainian tennis player, ranked third in the world in the WTA ranking in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Since September 2019, she has achieved thirty victories against players ranked within the top ten of the Women's Tennis Association leaderboard at the time of play and has attained an aggregate total of thirty–seven victories against players who have previously held the number-one world ranking.

The most successful athlete in the history of Ukrainian tennis set many national records, both among women and among men:

• took the highest third position among Ukrainian tennis players in the world ranking,
• the only winner in the final championship of the year,
• the only woman to reach the semi-finals of the Grand Slam tournaments in singles.

It should be noted that the Ukrainian tennis player Marta Kostiuk who became the winner of the WTA series tournament in the American Austin, was booed at Roland Garros as she did not shake hands with the Belarusian athlete.

Moreover, Ukrainian women won the European rowing championship for the first time in 11 years.