Emma Raducanu, who currently sits at top position for Britain, retired from her first round of the Wuhan Open against America’s Ann Li.
The young athlete seemed to struggle with the sky-high temperatures and humidity in China, with play suspended earlier this week as temperatures reached 34 degrees Celsius.
Raducanu started strong, breaking Li’s first game, but the American quickly changed the tides, winning the next six successive games to quickly dominate the first set, which lasted just 28 minutes.
The British athlete, infamous for her 2021 US Open win, stubbornly held on as the second set opened holding serve, but faltered soon after, as successive unforced errors and an inability to convert two break points allowed Li to gain a 2 - 1 lead.
Raducanu called for her trainer after this double break down, and had her temperature and blood pressure taken. She called for a medical timeout, before retiring from the match all together.
This isn’t the first time that the heat has had serious consequences on peak performance tennis recently. The recent Shanghai Masters saw the defending champion Jannik Sinner unable to continue in the third round due to cramp, and even tennis legend Novak Djokovic threw up from the sheer toll on his body during his win against Yannick Hanfmann.
This, obviously, will not be the result that Raducanu was hoping for, and comes at an unfortunate time as success at the Wuhan Open would have worked in Raducanu’s favour for being seeded for the Australian Open in January, which is the first Grand Slam of the season.
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