Tecnifibre Debuts Special Iga Swiatek-Daniil Medvedev T-Fight Racket
Tecnifibre's two lead tennis athletes share history—both have reached No. 1 in the world and have won a U.S. Open championship—and in a first for the brand, they both also share a racket frame in 2025, the Tecnifibre T-Fight. The French-based tennis company will celebrate all the sharing by creating a special-edition—and colorful—T-Fight ID (the ID stands for Iga and Daniil) making it available at retail on July 23 while also having both Swiatek and Medvedev play with the limited-edition colorway throughout the U.S. Open series.
'T-Fight has been our flagship racket, and we have very much been known for all-white rackets,' Philippe Oudshoorn, Tecnifibre North America brand director, tells me. 'White is a pretty important part of our brand, but we definitely wanted to do something that was different and make it a story about our athletes.'
There were no better athletes to focus on than Swiatek and Medvedev, a pair that have worked together since 2020 during brand events while enjoying success on their respective tours. 'Daniil is a funny guy and has an authentic and joyful demeanor off the court,' Oudshoorn says, 'and it really loosens up Iga and you get to see who she is off the court. It creates this pretty funny dynamic.'
Tecnifibre going blue for a limited-edition T-Fight tennis racket for Daniil Medvedev and Iga ... More Swiatek.
Tecnifibre has seen exponential growth in tennis in the last few years, certainly owing to the success of the two ambassadors, Oudshoorn says. With the quality chemistry they have shown together 'it was the perfect time to do something Tecnifibre has never done before, something not white, dedicated to our athletes and to really tell their story.'
The first order of design was settling on a color. Since both players have won a U.S. Open, Tecnifibre took inspiration from the courts of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows to make blue the lead color, which is also a Tecnifibre brand color. To add an accent, and to keep with the U.S. Open theme, they sprinkled in green, doubly inspired by the Statue of Liberty in New York. 'There is a New York City nod from a design perspective,' Oudshoorn says. 'Daniil and Iga were involved in this and they both like the color blue. It is something still very Tecnifibre, but so very different because of the color.'
MORE: Tecnifibre's Flagship Racket, The T-Fight, Gets A 2025 Update
Medvedev and Swiatek will be the only Tecnifibre athletes using the special-edition colorway this summer. Tecnifibre will release two models at retail, one the 305-gram version Medvedev favors with a 98-square-inch head and an 18x19 string pattern and the other Swiatek's chosen 300-gram racket with a 100-square-inch head and 16x19 string pattern.
The rackets feature a green flame logo inspired by the Statue of Liberty, with a '21' inside one flame and a '22' inside the other to represent the years each player won the U.S. Open.
A trio of dampeners—a flame, bagel and pretzel—are also available as part of the Tecnifibre T-Fight ... More ID release.
Tecnifibre expects this to be a one-off event, making the rackets true limited-edition releases.
Along with the rackets, Tecnifibre will debut a blue bag and a set of three special-edition dampeners, a flame inspired by the Statue of Liberty, a bagel inspired by Swiatek and a pretzel inspired by Medvedev.
The chemistry between Iga Swiatek and Daniil Medvedev help the co-created T-Fight ID tennis racket ... More come to life.
'This was such a critical piece to the story,' Oudshoorn says of the extra dampener touch. 'I think it is one of the biggest parts of what we created.' He says the dampeners help connect the stories of the two players. While Swiatek's bagel story is well chronicled (and again established with a 6-0, 6-0 victory in the 2025 Wimbledon final), in 2020 Swiatek and Medvedev did a Q&A together and Swiatek described Medvedev's game like a pretzel, which produced plenty of laughter. Just a few days later, Medvedev posted a picture on social media of him holding a pretzel with a big smile, tagging Swiatek in the post.
'Seeing how relaxed they are and how much fun they have together, there is really cool dynamics,' Oudshoorn says. The dampeners, which come in a special box with all three styles, help tie it all together. 'There is just a certain amount of energy that is contagious and comes to life,' Oudshoorn says. 'It has been really fun and so critical for the brand to start marketing our athletes a lot more than just relying on results. It is great for everyone, the brand, Daniil and Iga.'
This is also one of the first times a tennis racket promotion has been based on both a male and female athlete at the same time. 'We are all just through the moon to do this with Daniil and Iga,' Oudshoorn says, 'and honor their results and what they have done for the company.'
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Palace's starting point is likely to be that Textor, whose Eagle Football Group still contains his controlling stakes at Brazilian side Botafogo, Belgian's RWDM Brussels (rebranded from Molenbeek earlier this year) and Lyon, did not have what UEFA calls 'decisive influence' at Selhurst Park, and that they have never been part of his multi-club group. Advertisement This, you would think, is supported by the fact he has just sold his 43 per cent stake in Palace to Woody Johnson, the billionaire owner of the NFL's New York Jets and former U.S. ambassador to the UK. Furthermore, that 43 per cent stake only gave Textor one of four voting shares at Palace, with Parish and two other American investors, David Blitzer and Josh Harris, also holding one each. As Textor has previously explained to The Athletic, decisions at Palace very rarely, if ever, went to a vote, as Blitzer and Harris are silent partners who trust Parish to run things. 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Nobody tells Steve (Parish) what to do, he's as stubborn as anybody.' Palace, no doubt, will say the only player to be transferred between them and Lyon was centre-back Jake O'Brien in 2023: beyond some young players going on loan to Molenbeek (including O'Brien, earlier in his career), they had no other transactions with an Eagle Football Group club, despite Textor's frequent suggestions. Advertisement But Dr Gregory Ioannidis, an experienced campaigner at CAS and an associate professor at Sheffield Hallam University, is not sure this will be enough to sway the panel. He believes Palace will try to argue that a 'more flexible and purposeful interpretation of the regulations' should be applied, with the club's lawyers asking the panel to think about what UEFA is trying to achieve with its MCO rules, fair competition, and whether the English side pose any threat to that legitimate aim. 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As MCO groups have proliferated across Europe, UEFA has given owners two options: reduce your stake in one of the clubs that want to compete in the same competition to less than 30 per cent, step down as a director and halt whatever player-trading strategy you are pursuing with the two teams, or put one of into a blind trust, so you have no influence over day-to-day operations. Crucially, UEFA moved the deadline for doing one or the other of these workarounds from early June to March 1. DAC, Drogheda and Palace all missed this memo. However, in both the DAC and Drogheda cases, the CAS panels backed UEFA. Advertisement 'What is of immense importance here is the panels' findings that the current regulations do not require evidence of actual influence, but rather only the possibility of such influence,' says Ioannidis. 'This, in conjunction with the finding on the procedural aspect of submitting the changes in the club's ownership structure on time (or not), may cause serious difficulties for those arguing Palace's case.' Parish has explained in recent interviews that Palace were too busy playing Championship neighbours Millwall in the last 16 of the FA Cup on March 1 to be thinking about what might happen if they were to win the whole thing and play in Europe for the first time in their history, but Duval says the deadline argument is doomed. 'It seems to me that a possible argument about the new deadline has already been rejected, thus the main focus will probably be on whether Textor had decisive influence,' he says. 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And there is some encouragement here, in that the concepts of fairness, integrity and sporting justice are all enshrined in Swiss law. But there are risks attached to this approach, too. 'Swiss law does protect such principles and both CAS and the Swiss Federal Tribunal (where any appeals over a CAS verdict are heard but rarely upheld) have ruled accordingly,' says Ioannidis. 'However, I wouldn't run this argument, because the panel may take the view that it is precisely for these principles that UEFA's decision may be upheld, as the other clubs in the competition acted promptly and ensured they followed the rules and deadlines.' Advertisement That said, the Drogheda case shows that one of the panel disagreed with his colleagues. The written judgment has not been published, so we do not know why they disagreed but it is possible the Irish club's plea for a more common-sense-based assessment of the rules was persuasive. Palace may think that if they can do the same, they are halfway there. 'Not everything is negative for Palace,' says Ioannidis. 'I would argue that the intention of the regulator is to ensure fair competition. As such, the fact that Palace may have realised their mistake and acted in compliance with the rules, albeit late, shows a genuine and honest approach to the legitimate aim pursued by UEFA. 'In this instance, it would be fair, just and reasonable for UEFA to allow Palace to be admitted to the Europa League.' Another possible line of attack for Palace is the apparent inconsistencies in the application of UEFA's rules — and this is where the decision to make Forest a party in this appeal is intriguing. 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But an argument that effectively depends on the panel accepting that it is OK for a club to be confused about the regulations is unlikely to pan out. 'The rules and deadlines have always been there, and Palace had to act promptly, irrespective of what other clubs did,' says Ioannidis. 'The panel might say that a professional club, with an army of expert lawyers, ought to be more diligent and proactive. If confused, they could have asked UEFA for clarification.' And with that sensible advice, we should probably wrap this up and wait for CAS to make sense of it all. Hopefully.
