Raducanu 'just friends' with future doubles partner Alcaraz
Raducanu and Alcaraz practiced together at Wimbledon on Friday as part of a sponsors commitment and will play alongside each other at Flushing Meadows in September in the mixed doubles.
Five-time Grand Slam champion Alcaraz revealed last week he had made the request to play with Raducanu, who shot to fame when she won the US Open in 2021.
"We're just good friends," said a smiling Raducanu when asked about speculation that the two are dating.
"It was fun yesterday. We were both on court with Evian. We were just getting some volley practicing ahead of New York.
"I'm really happy obviously to be playing with him. Yeah, we had a good time yesterday."
In contrast to Alcaraz's meteoric rise since making his major breakthrough at the US Open three years ago, Raducanu has struggled to shine under the spotlight since becoming a household name.
The 22-year-old has never progressed beyond the fourth round of the Grand Slam since winning in New York and has been battling a back injury heading into Wimbledon.
"Truthfully I don't expect much from myself this year. I know I've just been dealing with certain things. I just want to go out there and embrace the moment," added Raducanu, who faces fellow Briton Mimi Xu in the first round.
"I know there's not many opportunities to be playing at Wimbledon. You get it once a year and for a finite amount of time.
© 2025 AFP
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
3 hours ago
- France 24
Russia's 'Mr Nobody' gambles all with film on Kremlin propaganda
Talankin, the school's event organiser and also a keen videographer, found the propaganda work so depressing that he wanted to quit his job in the industrial town of Karabash. Then he received what he says was the strangest message of his life. A Europe-based filmmaker got in touch, offering to collaborate on a project to document the abrupt militarisation of Talankin's school in the wake of Russia's February 2022 invasion of its neighbour. Talankin had earlier seen a post from a Russian company looking for people whose jobs had been affected by the war. Talankin said he was ready to talk. After receiving the foreigner's offer Talankin did not sleep all night. The project changed his life forever. After teaming up with David Borenstein and shooting many hours of footage, Talankin last summer fled Russia with seven hard discs, leaving behind his mother, brothers and sisters and the town he loved. Using the smuggled-out footage Borenstein, a Denmark-based US filmmaker, directed what became "Mr Nobody Against Putin", an award-winning 90-minute documentary which exposes the intensity of the propaganda at Talankin's school and throughout Karabash. It premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January. - 'Persona non grata' - The project cost Talankin dearly. Local officials banned his former colleagues from contacting him, he became a hate figure for supporters of the war and his school librarian mother was upset. "I have become a persona non grata," Talankin, 34, told AFP from Prague, where he is now based. Russia outlawed all criticism of the Russian military and the Kremlin and Talankin knew he had taken huge risks. But he has no regrets. "I would do it all over again." He has been buoyed by the support of people featured in the film including those who lost their loved ones in the war. One former colleague said she became ashamed that she, too, was "part of the system." The documentary reaped awards at festivals and the film crew hopes it will be available to wider audiences in Europe later this year. Borenstein said the film's success had been a "relief" because the multi-national crew overcame numerous obstacles including communication and security. But above all he was "really scared" that if the film flopped Talankin's sacrifice would come to nothing. "I knew the whole time that Pasha would have to leave Russia to make this project happen," Borenstein told AFP, referring to his co-director by his diminutive. "That is a huge sacrifice for him, because his mum is there, his whole life is there, he does not speak English, not at that time." Talankin has not been able to join the crew to present the film at the Sundance festival in Utah and elsewhere due to paperwork issues, but the team hopes this will soon change. For now he is learning English and adjusting to his new life in Prague. 'Like musketeers' Talankin said he was heartened by the reactions at the screenings. One viewer in the Czech Republic said he hated Russians but the film made him reconsider. "We knew nothing about what was happening to you," Talankin quoted the Czech as saying. "It is a powerful and poetic piece of cinema," said producer Alexandra Fechner, who is promoting the film in France. "This film shows the hidden side of propaganda in Russia, which targets the youngest members of society, children who are being taught a rewritten version of history and given guns!" she said. With the war in its fourth year, Moscow has put society on a war footing and leveraged the educational system to raise a fiercely pro-Kremlin generation. The film features Wagner mercenaries telling children about hand grenades and teachers calling Ukrainians "neo-Nazi", and includes an audio recording of a wailing mother at her soldier son's funeral. But critics also point to the documentary's empathy and light touch. In one episode, a history teacher tells pupils that the spiralling prices could soon make gas unaffordable for Europeans. "The French will soon be like musketeers, riding horses, and the rest of Europe too," he said. Borenstein said that by viewing the footage sent by Talankin nearly every day, he understood the effect of the dehumanising war-time propaganda. While at the beginning he found some of the clips shocking, months later his mind had become so used to the onslaught of the propaganda that he did not see the footage depicting the Wagner mercenaries as something abnormal. "I was able to replicate among myself some of the feelings that maybe the students and people in the school felt," he said. "Looking at this propaganda every single day was a lesson in how desensitised you can become to it." A lot of the footage had not made it into the film, including the school's preparations for the possibility of a nuclear attack. Karabash is located close to one of Russia's most sensitive sites, the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant. Talankin said Borenstein did not want the viewers to "drown in the enormous amount of negative material." © 2025 AFP
France 24
4 hours ago
- France 24
Olson wins Western States 100 in California, Jornet third
Billed as one of the most competitive editions in the race's 52-year history, this year's running of the 100-mile (161-kilometer) event lived up to the hype. Around 15 elite runners crested the course's high point around 2,600 meters (8,600 feet) above sea level just after sunrise following a 5:00 am (1200 GMT) start at Olympic Valley. After weaving through chilly snowfields of the Sierra Nevada mountains, runners then faced the brutal heat of canyons where temperatures neared 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). The unforgiving combination of extreme heat and rugged terrain -- coupled with around 5,500 meters of climbing -- took its usual toll on the field. Maintaining an average pace of nearly 12 kilometers per hour, Olson, 29, surged to the front midway through the race and never looked back. He broke the tape at the finishing point at Auburn High School in 14 hours, 11 minutes and 25 seconds -- just two minutes shy of Jim Walmsley's course record (14:09:28). Walmsley, a three-time winner, withdrew from this year's race. After placing fifth in 2024, Olson's victory cements his place among the elite of ultra-trail running. The Salt Lake City native had previously earned top-20 finishes at the "CCC", the 100-km sister race to the famous Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc in Chamonix. Restricted entry Chris Myers claimed second after going shoulder-to-shoulder with Olson for much of the race. Spaniard Jornet was third, in a repeat of his finish at the Western States in 2010. Jornet, 37, returned to take part in this year's event 14 years after his lone victory in the race, determined to test himself against a new generation of athletes on the fast, exposed trails of California. Despite his renowned mental toughness, Jornet was unable to close the gap during the hottest parts of the race. Over the past 15 years, he has helped boost the profile of trail running, broadening the appeal of the niche endurance pursuit. Even with elite preparation and cutting-edge cooling strategies, no one is immune to the challenges posed by the Western States. Simply earning a bib to race in the event -- which is limited to 369 entrants -- is a feat in itself. Elite runners may qualify through one of the 30 "Golden Tickets" awarded at select races. For everyone else, entry depends on a livestreamed annual lottery that draws nearly 10,000 hopefuls, some of whom wait a decade for their name to be called. For first-time applicants, the odds hover around 0.04 percent, improving only with years of patience and additional qualifying ultras. Even after overcoming the hurdles to entry, some runners fail to last the course. Among those who were forced to withdraw this year was American runner David Roche, a rising star of the sport who had won both of his previous 100-milers. Greeted with loud cheers at the Foresthill aid station at mile 62, Roche appeared visibly shaken and was eventually forced to withdraw. © 2025 AFP
France 24
6 hours ago
- France 24
Lyon owner Textor to take step back from running club after relegation to Ligue 2
"Our success on the pitch has not been matched by our success off the pitch," Textor told AFP in relation to Lyon's plight despite them finishing sixth in Ligue 1 in the season just finished to qualify for Europe. Textor runs Lyon in his role as president of Eagle Football, the group which owns several clubs including Brazilian champions Botafogo. But he admitted that his efforts to reduce Lyon's debts and solve their problems have not been enough to convince French football's financial watchdog, known as the DNCG. He therefore now plans to let others take charge of the club's appeal against their relegation, which was announced last Tuesday. "I am going to pull back from this process. We have some people, some partners that are going to take the step forward," he told AFP in Philadelphia following Botafogo's 1-0 defeat to Palmeiras in the Club World Cup on Saturday. "I am an owner. If I had a coach go into a game five times in a row with a bad tactical plan I'd fire him. "As the majority owner of Eagle Football I am clearly not getting it done at the DNCG so we are going to put some different faces in play, and we are going to work very constructively with the DNCG." Textor has just agreed a deal to sell his 43 percent stake in English Premier League club Crystal Palace to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. The BBC reported that Johnson, a former US ambassador to the United Kingdom, would pay £190 million ($255 million) for the shares. Textor, who bought Lyon in late 2022, believes that money can be reinjected into the seven-time French champions to help their case. Explaining his decision to step back from Lyon, Textor said he felt his "weird" ideas were being misunderstood. "I am the capitalist that shows up with a bunch of weird creative ideas and I don't understand why they are not understood there, and that is hurting the club," he said. "So I know we are going to put some more capital into the equation, we are going to argue for the case we already made, we are going to do it respectfully." Lyon announced on Friday that they had reached an agreement with European football's governing body UEFA to enable them to play in next season's Europa League, provided an appeal against their relegation succeeds. "There is no solvency or sustainability issue with us –- we just cleared the UEFA financial sustainability review," Textor added. "I am very proud of our on-pitch success. We had a relegation squad when I took it took care of the banks, we stabilised the club, we got them back into Europe, and then administratively we get sent down. "It's a pretty odd world for me." © 2025 AFP
