The heartbreaking moment that left Wimbledon spectators shattered
Russian tennis legend Margarita Gasparyan has suffered one of the crueller exits from Wimbledon as an old injury flared up and left her unable to continue the match.
The world no. 62 had victory in her sights as she was playing against 8th seed Elina Svitolina and took the first set 7-5 in 51 minutes. The domination continued into the second set as Elina caught up and served at 6-5 to level the match.
Margarita has had knee troubles in the past and as the second set of the match came to a close, she looked to be in increasing amounts of pain.
Her movement was impacted, and she was unable to stand up at 5-5, which led her to having to lie down on the grass court as the cramp was speculated to be the reason behind her collapse.
Gasparyan in a lot of pain now. Leg appears to be cramping after landing on it after a serve. She’s lying on the ground, but seemed to tell umpire she’s ok, just cramping. 5-5, 0-30. #Wimbledon
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) July 3, 2019
Margarita could only watch on as her rival brought her water and comforted her at the baseline as the pair waited for physio to arrive. The crowd could only watch on in silence as they waited for the outcome.
Margarita continued to play, but barely managed to finish the game. She tried to get around the court as best she could without further aggravating her injury, but her opponent broke to take the lead at 6-5.
The physio treated Margarita’s left quad in the changeover, but there was not much more to be done.
She was in tears as she limped to the net to retire and continued to sob as she realised that her dreams of being in the third round were at her fingertips.
Her opponent, Elina, was stunned. She told news.com.au: “Honestly, I was a little bit shocked. It’s never nice to get this when someone is injured like that. It puts you a little bit off.
“At the end we’d expect that she would go and play. Yeah, it happened that way and really unfortunate for her.
“You give her some water, because I know when there is cramps you need to drink lots of water. Your muscles are contracting, so it’s important just to drink lots of fluids.
“So that’s why I gave her some water, because no one really did anything. I mean, we were trying to help, but, yeah, it’s tough to react straight away.”