Noami Osaka, recent winner of the US Open, has withdrawn from Roland-Garros (September 27-October 11). The Japanese has not recovered from a thigh injury.
Roland-Garros will not host the recent winner of the US Open. Naomi Osaka has indeed announced her withdrawal for the Paris Grand Slam (September 27-October 11) Thursday due to a persistent injury to a thigh. “Unfortunately I will not be able to play at Roland Garros this year, she wrote on her Twitter account. My thigh still hurts and I will not have time to prepare for the clay.
– NaomiOsaka 大 坂 な お み (@naomiosaka) September 18, 2020
“These two tournaments were too close to each other for me to chain them this year,” added the one who won her third Grand Slam tournament on September 12 in New York. Two weeks separate these two Majors, Roland-Garros having been rescheduled due to the coronavirus pandemic which has put the season under cover for four months or even six for some players, like Osaka, who have not made their return to the competition that end of August. This is a new weight loss in the women’s table at Roland Garros after that of the defending champion, Ashleigh Barty.
Osaka, 3rd in the world, first played in the Cincinnati tournament, relocated in the bubble of Flushing Meadows, managing to reach the final. But she gave up arguing, injured in the left adductor, to preserve her physique and her chances for the US Open which started in stride.
It took him well, since two weeks later, she registered her name for the second time in the New York Major, beating the Belarusian Victoria Azarenka in the final. She had already won in 2018 and then won the 2019 Australian Open.
At 22, Osaka has also taken on another dimension outside of the courts through his activism in the fight against racism. After the death of Jacob Blake, who was shot several times in the back by a police officer in Wisconsin, she followed the boycott movement launched by the Milwaukee Bucks team during the NBA play-offs, and refused to play his Cincinnati semi-final.
The WTA circuit and the organizers of the tournament having shown solidarity in their turn by canceling the matches scheduled for that day, she finally reversed her decision. At the US Open, she maintained her desire to raise awareness in the hushed microcosm of tennis by wearing, when she arrived on the court during each of her seven matches, a mask with the name of a black person victim of police violence in the United States.
