Lyon – After fleeing her home country, Ukrainian tennis player Dajana Jastremska narrowly missed out on the title at the WTA tournament in Lyon.
The unseeded Ukrainian lost the final to eighth-seeded Chinese Zhang Shuai 6-3, 3-6, 4-6. Her performance was a surprise and is a great achievement for the world number 140. She had declared that she was winning on the tennis court for Ukraine.
Before the tournament opener in France, she had made public details of her flight from Ukraine, which she had decided to do because of Russia’s military attack. “After spending two nights in the underground car park, my parents made the decision to get me and my little sister out of Ukraine at all costs,” the 21-year-old from Odessa had written on Instagram. Her parents apparently stayed behind in Ukraine.
Jastremska had to endure an almost six-month suspension for suspected doping last year, but had been eligible to play again since June 2021. The banned substance mesterolone was found in a doping sample taken on 24 November 2020. Jastremska denied using performance-enhancing drugs and explained that the amount of the anabolic steroid found was extremely small. She could not explain how the positive sample had come about.