Victoria Azarenka and her son Leo share a special handshake during a training session.
The former world no to open.
As usual, Victoria Azarenka was spotted with her son Leo, this time at the Washington training ground. A video shared on the official Mubadala Citi DC Open Twitter account shows the former world No. 1 playfully shaking hands with her son.
“Vika & Leo’s special handshake,” read the caption.
In 2016, the Belarusian tennis player gave birth to her son and engaged in a difficult custody battle with ex-boyfriend Billy McKeague, who kept her away from the WTA Tour in 2017 because she refused to travel around the world without her son.
Eventually, Azarenka won custody and they are often seen together, though rarely on the courts, during Vichka’s tournaments
The world No. 19 made her final appearance at Wimbledon, where she reached week two at SW19 with wins over Yue Yuan, Nadia Podoroska and Daria Kasatkina (seeded 11th).
In the fourth round, she faced Elina Svitolina in a thrilling match, which the Ukrainian won. Svitolina and other Ukrainian players have refused to shake hands with Russian and Belarusian players after matches due to the ongoing conflict in their country.
Azarenka decided not to shake hands with Svitolina after the match out of respect for the 29-year-old’s decision, but this was met with a negative reception from the crowd at the All England Club, prompting boos. At the subsequent press conference, Azarenka commented on the situation:
“She doesn’t want to shake hands with the Russians and Belarusians. I respected her decision. What should I have done? Stay and wait? There’s nothing I could have done that was right, so I just did what thought I was respectful of her decision.”
This time, Azarenka and Svitolina will face each other again in the first round of the Citi DC Open. In their head-to-head (H2H) record, “Vichka” leads 5-1, with the only loss being the mentioned match on Court 1 at Wimbledon three weeks ago.
2023-07-30 02:02:40
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