Emma Raducanu broke down after a first-round defeat at Roland Garros to Solana Sierra, saying it is “very difficult” to keep coming back. With a foot injury, post-viral illness and a demanding summer ahead, the British No. 1 faces a potentially season-defining
Emma Raducanu’s comeback seemed to hold together until a single question landed. In the moments after her first-round defeat at Roland Garros to Solana Sierra, her voice began to waver—then her eyes filled with tears.
It was the part nobody in the room expected. Up until then. Raducanu had offered the familiar. careful answers: she was disappointed to lose; she had to take positives from the fight she showed in the second set after being “bageled” in the first; and she explained how a lack of matches coming into Roland Garros—because of injury and illness—had left her short.
But when she was asked what mindset you need to stop and come back all the time, the replies stopped sounding rehearsed. “It’s very difficult,” she said. “I think you need a lot of resilience. I think I’m trying my best each day.”
Then she added, slowly, “I think that’s all I can ask of myself.”
That answer carried the real weight of the last few years. Not the defeat itself. Raducanu was short of competitive practice, playing a clay-court specialist in 30+ degree Parisian heat. The emotion seemed aimed more at the grind—the mental effort it takes to keep fighting in the spotlight even when the body keeps interrupting the plan.
This season alone, she has already dealt with a foot injury and a post-viral illness that left her able to play just one match since March before this.
The spotlight doesn’t soften for her, either. For all the criticism she attracts—and for all the trolls—there is a blunt reality underneath it: Raducanu is still only 23. She has already had multiple wrist and back surgeries, and at one point used a mobility scooter.
And she is also living with a kind of contrast most athletes never face. For someone who won the most unexpected Grand Slam in history as an 18-year-old at the US Open in 2021. tennis has never simply been something she can return to “for the love of the game” without consequences. Every match is dissected. Every absence is questioned.
That sense of scrutiny returned when talk moved to her decision to rehire Andrew Richardson. Raducanu worked with Richardson when she won the US Open in 2021, but he was sacked just days later.
When asked about her choice to bring him back—widely understood to have been driven by her father—Raducanu said: “I think at that time it was very difficult to say I made a mistake. because in my life everything changed upside down. and I didn’t really think I had the most handle over the situation in the sense that I was being pulled left. right. I didn’t really know what was going on.”.
She made it clear she did not want to hand over control again. She said it was her decision to reach out to Richardson via text, that she hardly told anyone until it was done, and that she “really wanted to just make the decisions for myself and most authentically.”
Eight permanent coaches have come and gone since that US Open triumph, each with a different view of where her career should go. For the first time in a while, it sounded like she believes she is steering the process herself.
There was also a practical decision behind her clay-court campaign. She could have skipped the clay season to prepare for Wimbledon. but she felt—regardless of surface—that she needed matches. After two-and-a-half months away from the tour, it was not hard to see why she wanted the court time. She fought back in the second set against Sierra, and that spirit matters even in defeat.
Now the focus shifts to Wimbledon, where the margin for error is smaller than ever. After her defeat, eyes move to a summer that could decide the direction of her next phase.
Raducanu remains 39 in the world, but she could drop further depending on other results at the French Open. She was unseeded at Roland Garros and now faces what has been framed as a race against time if she wants to earn something meaningful at the All England Club.
She has only been seeded once at Wimbledon, in 2022—when she produced her worst performance there with a second-round exit. With a low-ranking seed, there is often a cruel flip in the draws: a bigger name can arrive as early as the third round, leaving a player “at the mercy of the draw.”
Her game, though, has always carried something better-suited to grass. The skiddy surface gives her a way to move through points without needing to generate as much power to hit winners as she would on clay. Against Sierra, she hit none in the first set.
Her grass runway starts soon. She will play at Queen’s in a fortnight, where she reached the quarter-final last year and has ranking points to defend. A deeper run there would matter if she is to stand a chance in SW19.
Raducanu has also entered both the Berlin Open and Eastbourne, though the question is whether she will play both. Wimbledon comes at the end of June.
After the Roland Garros defeat, Raducanu returned to one simple desire: “I’m looking forward to getting back on home soil.”
For all the plans. all the schedules. and all the tennis talk about surfaces and seeds. what sits underneath the timeline is the message she gave when her composure finally slipped. Resilience is required—every day, she said, doing her best—because it is still “very difficult” to keep coming back. And this summer is where that belief will be tested most visibly.
Emma Raducanu Solana Sierra Roland Garros Wimbledon Queen's Club Berlin Open Eastbourne Andrew Richardson foot injury post-viral illness British No 1