Elena Rybakina arrived in New York unable to walk without pain after injuring her foot. She leaves the city as the US Open champion and new world number one.<\/p>\n
Kazakhstan’s Rybakina produced a brilliant performance to beat two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka 6-4 5-7 6-2<\/a> in Saturday’s final and repeat her Australian Open success<\/a> against the same player in January.<\/p>\n Clutching the trophy on Saturday night, Rybakina reflected that “some magic is happening” for her after her difficult lead-in to the tournament.<\/p>\n The 27-year-old aggravated a foot injury during her quarter-final in Cincinnati against Iga Swiatek last month, a little over a week before the final major of the year began.<\/p>\n Playing on through injury could have had dire consequences for the rest of her season – but Rybakina, knowing the top ranking was in her grasp, wanted to try to play in the final Grand Slam of the year.<\/p>\n “I was so upset. I didn’t know actually how it was going to be day by day,” she said.<\/p>\n “We arrived in New York and did an MRI. It didn’t look that great.<\/p>\n “I couldn’t even walk for the next few days without pain.<\/p>\n “I was lucky enough to have a very good doctor in Australia. She was on the phone with us all the time and somehow, with the team, we made a plan.”<\/p>\n Rybakina did not do any on-court training for a week, but daily recovery sessions in the gym – plus trips for dinner and to the cinema to “switch the mind” – helped get her ready for another major triumph.<\/p>\n She won her first four matches at Flushing Meadows without dropping a set, including seeing off four-time major winner Naomi Osaka.<\/p>\n Her run from then on – which included beating Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the quarter-finals, outlasting third seed Coco Gauff in the semis and outplaying top seed Sabalenka in the final – was nothing short of outstanding.<\/p>\n “I was so unlucky with the injury, but I’m very proud,” Rybakina said.<\/p>\n “I still can’t believe it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elena Rybakina arrived in New York unable to walk without pain after injuring her foot. She leaves the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}