The athlete to follow | The fashionable Chinese in world tennis who made history for “not missing a shot”

Many times, sport finds idols and references in places beyond logic. It is easy to discover a good soccer player, basketball player or tennis player in Spain, a country in which these three sports are the top of the most practiced and followed sports. And, at the same time, it is difficult to explain how Carolina Marín, Ander Mirambell o Javier Fernandez, among many others, came to master their respective specialties. But the sport has that mystique that is difficult to explain.

It is curious to see how there are certain sports that your own nationality seems to focus on: winter sports or cycling are some clear examples, where it is practically an impossible mission to see African athletes. But it doesn’t stop being less striking than In a universal sport like tennis, it is unusual to see Asian athletes reach the top of the ranking.. And precisely with that stigma the protagonist of this week wants to end.

Until a few weeks ago, no Chinese player had been able to lift an ATP title. In a country with 1,400 million inhabitants, not a single one of them had been able to even get into a final of one of the great circuits of the tournament. And what’s more, he hadn’t managed to get among the seventy best rackets in the world. well now a 23-year-old has broken down all kinds of walls and he has everything to become a top level player.

And it is that Wu Yibing is a different player. Since he was little, he was very attracted to tennis, which his mother practiced. It didn’t take him long to show that he had the qualities to play a sport that is not very common in China, so His parents did not hesitate to look for the best academies and coaches around the world to improve their level.. Thus, he soon ended up in Spain, but the pressure that his mother imposed on him was really high.

Her level was improving, but everything was always little for her mother, who made him work beyond the limits of logic. She was so severe that she even came to him. force to play matches while injured so as not to lose sponsors. And those childhood problems ended up taking their toll on him in adolescence. He even broke relations with his mother and, although he began to enjoy tennis, injuries seriously began to cross his path.

I was just a kid when Wu Yibing won the junior US Open, putting himself in the mouths of the experts. So incredible was her skill that Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic did not miss the opportunity to train with him, being pleasantly surprised with its capabilities. The time came to make the leap to professionalism… and everything was cut short: the covid pandemic and back, shoulder, wrist and elbow injurieswho made him undergo surgery, left him almost without competing between 2019 and 2022.

But Wu Yibing not only did not give up, but was aware of the potential he had to succeed in tennis. And his first big opportunity came at the US Open last year. He not only became first Chinese player to win a match at a major in over 80 yearsbut he reached the third round, where he fell with Daniil Medvedev. And, just a few months later, he has become the first Chinese to win an ATP tournament, after achieving victory in Dallas.

On American soil he defeated Mmoh, Shapovalov, Mannarino, Fritz e Isner in the final to make history. “Can you please miss a blow?”the Frenchman came to shout in quarters before the impotence of seeing how Wu Biying no erraba casi nada. He is now the 67th player in the world and the Chinese is willing to continue growing: he is only 23 years old and has a long way to go. The game has it: now, it only remains to continue trusting in its enormous capabilities.

Many times, sport finds idols and references in places beyond logic. It is easy to discover a good soccer player, basketball player or tennis player in Spain, a country in which these three sports are the top of the most practiced and followed sports. And, at the same time, it is difficult to explain how Carolina Marín, Ander Mirambell o Javier Fernandez, among many others, came to master their respective specialties. But the sport has that mystique that is difficult to explain.