WORLD No4 Elena Rybakina sacked her coach just three days before the US Open due to “psychological problems” caused by his repeated insults.
The tennis superstar worked with Stefano Vukov for five years before parting ways with him.
She made it to the Australian Open final in 2023 and won her maiden Grand Slam at Wimbledon in 2022 when they were together. But as Russian journalist Sofya Tartakova has disclosed, there were definitely problems going on behind the scenes. She stated on the Tennis Bolshei YouTube channel: “She is facing all of these challenges right now because of a great deal of pressure from her previous coach Vukov. “They claim that Stefano was in New York at the US Open and was prepared to work with her going forward, but Lena made the decision to end their relationship due to a really challenging situation.
I don’t want to say big words, not quite the correct attitude of her mentor towards her.
“That is, he ‘ate’ her all the time, as people who surrounded Lena say. Rybakina’s parents stood up for her, because she could not break this vicious circle.
“On one hand, this is the coach who worked with her since [a young age], and she herself, together with her family, chose him.
“It is clear that they were very close, she won the main achievements of her career thanks to their joint work, [but] her parents insisted that Lena change something in her tennis life, because there was pressure, and insults, and bad words said to her. They were constantly from Vukov’s lips.
And now Elena Rybakina is suffering and trying to get rid of psychological problems, so the situation is, of course, very difficult for her, but we’ll see.
“I tried to find out if there is official information that he is banned from the WTA Tour, because we discussed this several months ago, that a report was allegedly written on him and he was suspended from work.
