Emma Raducanu has previous experience of men with fixations. If we are going to completely understand the fear that forced her to hide behind the chair of a referee in Dubai on Tuesday, then we must look back to an incident closer to her home. Much closer.
There is some symmetry in this, because on Sunday marks exactly three years since a man defended the sentence in the Bromley magistrates court. His name was Amrit Magar.
Now, it went beyond the descriptions of “obsessed behavior” that have flown from the Middle East during the past week. Magar's conviction went to stalk and his trial detailed how that sought Raducanu in a period between November 1 and December 4, 2021.
Of course, those were the months after he won the US Open. When an 18 -year -old girl, and Magar, a delivery driver almost twice her age, was obsessed.
The climbs began with a trip from their residence in northern London to the Southeast suburb of Bromley, where it was known that Raducanu lived at that time with their parents. Magar, who was then 35 years old, had found some details online and made the rest asking when he got there; First, he learned the street and finally the number of the house.
He would continue to do no less than three visits to Raducanu's family home, occasionally leaving his notes. One of them was a map that he had drawn, illustrating the long journey he made to his door that day. '23 miles walked 4, 'read. The card attached to a bouquet of flowers went further: “Nothing to say, but you deserve love.”
Emma Raducanu was crying after detecting a man in the crowd showing 'fixed behavior'
Raducanu told the referee and was visibly distressed while he behind the referee's chair
Raducanu played bravely, but there must be concerns about how long the glory can continue to pursue after the previous experience with a stalker
On another occasion, he decorated a tree in his front garden with Christmas lights, and on the last occasion he stole a shoe from the porch. It actually belonged to Raducanu's father, but Magar didn't know. As police told the police, he wanted a 'memories', and his restriction order is still in force today.
But we forget this quite fast, right? As in those of us abroad, observing, writing, commenting. Those who live it, not so much.
For Raducanu, it is not an issue that has argued with great depth since it happened, but this was the victim's statement I read in his name the courts in 2022: 'I feel that my freedom has taken it away. I'm constantly looking over my shoulder. I sit at the limit and worry that this can happen again. I don't feel safe in my own home, which is where I should feel safer. ''
Raducanu was 19 when that terrible change was inflicted in his sense of himself. He is now 22 years old, and we can only speculate on the intentions of a different man in the Dubai tennis championship.
But we know for one of his coaches, Roman Kelecic, that the individual had approached Raducanu in four recent tournaments in different countries. Jumping from a tour of tour, I wanted hugs and selfies, mainly, and that crawled for passing a note when I was alone in Dubai.
Detailing his suspicion that the man had followed her until he was isolated, Kelecic's evaluation was alarming: “He had a strategy that was terrifying, he thought everything, calculated it.”
Obviously, none of the behaviors has crossed a certain legal threshold (Raducanu has not advanced with charges, but his presence in his second round against Karolina Muchva was worrying enough to collapse in tears when he saw him.
If there has been a sadder view in your short career, then it is difficult to identify.
The point here is about the scar tissue. These are the fears that Raducanu has acquired without failures on the other hand and has joined a workplace that is hard enough. These are factors that are not sports, but live just below the surface, ready to ventilate old traumas, and somehow should be processed as a cost of doing business. Worse, like a sunken cost of success.
It is a heartbreaking, really, and touches a broader theme that regularly comes to mind when I see Raducanu.
I often ask myself how much enjoyment, the real enjoy of what they earn.
Those observers who seek to balance all that against income power are probably the habit of losing the point. I suspect that they often miss him with Raducanu.
Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the twice heptatlon world champion, once he told me that his best response to finally win a gold after years of difficulties and neurosis was “relief, only relief.”
Katarina Johnson-Thompson has previously spoken of 'relief' by winning the main titles
Andy Murray had a similar feeling when Wimbledon won for the first time in 2013
It is the same word as Andy Murray (2013 Wimbledon), Lionel Messi (2022 World Cup), Pep Guardiola (2023 Champions League), Tiger Woods (2019 Masters).
But what happens to those for whom the best came from the beginning and then everything was reduced so dramatically? Is there any shadow darker than the one you throw on yourself? In other words, how will relief in the future for Raducanu? And there comes a time when the disadvantages of this line of work are no longer worth it for a woman with a wide interior of interest?
No one of these coasts has broken the way he did, but nobody has also returned to karma in surgeries, defeats and inflated expectations of others. She won that US open in September; A stalker was in his trees in seven weeks and there ended the honeymoon.
Even if most professionals change an arm for what Raducanu has in the cabinet, how often does it seem happy on the sports side of their life in the last three and a half years? How regularly has a wave crashed in fleeting moments of promise?
His victory in Sunday's first round ended the worst streak of his career and caused an optimistic interview on the court on the freedom to walk through the streets of Dubai after 11 pm was full of joy, playing a little more like the teenager that danced in our eyes of eyes in Wimbledon a few summers. A couple of days later he met an “obsessed” individual.
It has been a brutal race on many fronts. I would not dare to say Raducanu's life in tennis since New York has been a succession of good decisions and unjust criticism, that would be wrong and hypocritical. I made some about the balance between their commercial and sports interests in this space, in this week, in 2024.
There are other actions that he has taken, generally in the rotation of his coaches and a reluctance to recover the impulse through classification tournaments, which guarantee the discussion. These conversations are part of the sport and so are the false steps of an athlete.
But if something positive comes from what happened in Dubai, it would be more empathy for a young athlete whose difficulties have been very reaching.
Fortunately he has time and talent on his side. I hope that the strange balls of this world allow you to look at that.
FIFA FIFA Club World Cup
The FIFA took a tweet this week with an appointment of Ursene Wenger to whip her Club World Cup: “The new goal for a player, most importantly, would be to be world champion with his country and world champion with his club.”
In a season in which the rate of exhaustion of the players has gone beyond dangerous levels, that comment can only come from someone who is deceived or sold. If you consult indecision, I go with both.
FIFA, led by Gianni Infantino, has been whipping his Club World Cup this week
Security is not the priority for Saudi confrontation
Martin Bakole arrived in Saudi Arabia a little after 1 in the morning on Saturday to replace Daniel Dubois in Fighting Joe Parker.
That required a flight from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Ethiopia on Friday and another in Riad, where he landed weavy, even for a heavyweight.
Regardless of the results, I am not convinced that the safety of a boxer has worked in the equations.