LONDON, July 7. /TASS/. Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedev cleared 2nd round of 2023 Wimbledon with 6:3; 6:3; 7:6 (7:5) win over Adrian Mannarino of France.
The third-seeded Medvedev, who is playing at the tournament in London under a neutral status, is now set to face the winner of the match between Marton Fucsovics of Hungary and Marcos Giron of the United States.
"I don’t know if I could relax overnight because the match wasn’t finished," the tournament’s official website quoted Medvedev as saying after the match.
"A couple of years ago I had this against [Hubert] Hurkacz and lost on the resumption, because overnight I prepared like for a new match - ice bath, everything. This time I didn’t even wash my hair," the Russian player said adding ""I did take a shower though."
Medvedev, 27, is currently third in the ATP Rankings List. In 2022, Medvedev was the number one ranked tennis player in the world for 16 weeks. He is the 2021 US Open Champion and has 20 ATP tournament titles under his belt. He has won five of those 20 titles this year. Also, in 2021, he won the Davis Cup for the Russian national team as well as the ATP Cup.
This season’s third Grand Slam tennis tournament, Wimbledon, kicked off on July 3 and unlike the previous edition of the tournament last year, Russian players were allowed to compete, but under certain conditions.
The Wimbledon tournament, the most prestigious out of the four Grand Slam tournaments, has been held annually in London since 1877. It took place last year between June 27 and July 10. This year’s Wimbledon runs between July 3 and 16.
Russia is represented this year in men’s singles by Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Aslan Karatsev. Russia’s Karen Khachanov announced earlier that he would skip this year’s tournament because of a bad back.
The women’s draw at the tournament includes six Russians: Daria Kasatkina, Veronika Kudermetova, Lyudmila Samsonova, Yekaterina Aleksandrova, Anastasia Potapova and Mirra Andreeva.
In 2022, Wimbledon organizers, the AELTC and the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), announced a decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players from participating in the 2022 edition of the tournament, citing Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine as the reason for the ban.
This year, Wimbledon organizers - the AELTC and the LTA - announced a decision to allow Russian and Belarusian players to participate in the tournament as neutrals and under several conditions.
Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, must compete under a neutral status and must not be financed by the governments of Russia or Belarus, or by state-run companies from either country.
Following the ban of Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon last year, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) announced decisions to strip Wimbledon of ranking points due to its move to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing at the 2022 Grand Slam tournament in London, as it violated the fundamental principles stipulating that players of any nationality can enter tournaments based on their merits and without any type of discrimination. President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach also criticized at that time Wimbledon organizers’ decision to bar players from Russia and Belarus.