MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. In a battle of Russians at the 2024 Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Adelaide International tennis tournament on Wednesday Daria Kasatkina fended off unseeded Anna Kalinskaya to secure a berth in the quarterfinals of the tournament.

Kasatkina, playing in the tournament under a neutral status, knocked her compatriot out of the competition in three sets, 5-7; 6-4; 7-5. Kalinskaya, 25, was leading 4-0 in the 2nd set but requested medical assistance several times complaining of pain in her neck.

Russia’s Kasatkina will now square off in the quarterfinals against Germany’s Laura Siegemund, who earlier in the day blasted past Romania’s Ana Bogdan with a straight sets win of 6-4; 7-5.

Kasatkina, 26, is currently ranked 15th in the WTA Rankings and has six WTA tournament titles under her belt. To date, her best result in Grand Slams was in 2022 when she reached the semifinals of the French Open. She is also the winner of the 2021 Billie Jean King Cup.

In the other quarterfinal encounters at the tournament in Adelaide Kazakhstan’s Yelena Rybakina will take on Russia’s Yekaterina Alexandrova; Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk will play against Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, and Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova is set to face Jessica Pegula of the United States.

The Adelaide International is a WTA 500 tennis tournament, which first took place in 2020. It is played on outdoor hard courts. This year, the tournament runs from January 8-13 and offers a purse of over $922,570 in prize money. Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic is the tournament’s reigning champion, but she is skipping this year’s competition.

Russian players’ neutral status at tennis tournaments

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.

Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) ruled on March 1, 2022 to suspend the membership of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis federations while also cancelling all previously scheduled tennis tournaments in the two countries.

On March 14, 2022, the ITF also confirmed its prohibition of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis teams from the 2022 Davis Cup and 2022 Billie Jean King Cup.

However, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) allowed tennis players from Russia and Belarus to continue participating in WTA and ATP tournaments, but only under a neutral status.