And eleven! Kristina Mladenovic qualified for her eleventh Grand Slam final in women’s doubles on Wednesday. A first with the Chinese Shuai Zhang, also known for a series of twenty-two consecutive defeats in singles. But the complementarity of the two girls was obvious. At 31, “Kiki” will go for a sixth Major, the first at Flushing Meadows.
We thought then that a player of such quality would have done good to the French team during the Olympic Games. But the Northerner had disappeared from the list. Captain Julien Benneteau’s version was that Kristina Mladenovic wanted to prioritize her personal career. Which was not false. But not completely true…
“Mental torture”
“At the beginning of the year, it was a goal, but the more time went on, the more complicated things got,” the Frenchwoman confided at Flushing Meadows. “I wanted to make my cut for the US Open qualifiers. If I made the Games, that would mean four weeks without a singles tournament. There was also the question of changing surfaces. It was an extremely difficult decision. Mental torture.”
After a slight blank, Kristina Mladenovic gave a behind-the-scenes look at the affair. “I won’t hide from you, too, that there was disappointment with the way they handled the composition of the mixed. Lots of little things added up. The fact that I was told that I was not the player chosen for the mixed, that tipped the balance. I only had the women’s doubles left. Was I ready to sacrifice my health with these surface changes?”
“It was the man who decided…”
“Kiki” had to swallow the disappointment of seeing the FFT choose Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Caroline Garcia, whose association had “matched” at Indian Wells. “We are not defined by a number or a ranking,” retorts Mladenovic. “At the beginning of the year, we managed to agree with Caroline to play doubles together. I had the mixed in mind. I think I have proven enough in my career. What was disappointing was the way it was communicated. I would have liked to have been in the discussion. It was the man, I think, who decided with whom he preferred to play. Why did the man choose? Edouard won Roland, great! I won some too. Why don’t we discuss?”
Where we learned that Edouard Roger-Vasselin had asked Kristina Mladenovic to be his mixed partner during the Paris Grand Slam. He had been refused.
“He told me: ‘If we play well, we have a chance of…'”, relates Kiki Mladenovic. “We don’t have to prove anything to anyone. We just have to trust ourselves. We can come first at Roland Garros and win a medal. And vice versa. I felt like I was being tested. His approach wasn’t good and I didn’t communicate with the rest of the delegation. It was just a shame. We should have communicated together and made a team decision. I preferred to leave the Olympic project aside.” In this case, the French team reduced its chances of winning a medal.
- RMC Sport
