The Wimbledon championships are still two months away, but already they have shed a little stardust with the news that Emma Raducanu will not be taking part. As the only tennis tournament that many Brits follow – yet commit to with an unhinged devotion – Wimbledon’s fan experience involves debating the merits of whoever happens to be its current darling-cum-human-sacrifice. On Wednesday Raducanu, a recent holder of that position, posted a picture to Instagram from her hospital bed, revealing the treatment to both hands (and an ankle) that will keep her out of competition for the rest of the summer.
There was, it is pleasing to observe, plenty of sympathy and well-wishing for the 20-year-old, after a long struggle with form since her unexpected and historic US Open win. After an early exit in Stuttgart in mid-April and before her withdrawal from the Madrid Open last week, there had been concerns that her ranking in the women’s top 100 was under threat. But of just as much interest to many on social media has been the fate of her many and valuable sponsorship deals.
Given that British Airways and Porsche were among the first Insta-responders to bombard her with heart emojis (“We wish you a speedy recovery and an even stronger return to the court and behind the steering wheel!” said Porsche), I think we can say that she’ll be doing fine for a while yet. But the levels of emotion expressed during the past year about her signing of endorsement deals have been instructive. And even as she documented her injury struggles, there were drive-by commentators asking if she would be well enough to sign her cheques while she was on her break.
Last October, Raducanu was calculated to be the 12th most marketable athlete in the world, just behind Tom Brady and Simone Biles; she was four and five places ahead of Rafael Nadal and Neymar respectively. Her many deals – with megabrands from Vodafone to HSBC, Tiffany to Dior – have been breathlessly enumerated and evaluated, and a £10m price tag seems likely to be a conservative estimate of their worth.
But her failure immediately to fulfil her bright burst of promise has raised the repeated question of whether her commercial obligations might distract and detract from her tennis-playing. Perhaps this week the question should be turned on its head. Why not ask instead whether a secure income, and the financial wherewithal to provide the best possible recovery, will help her plan for and train in the future?
It’s curious how quickly we become motivated about female athletes’ wellbeing when they’re finally offered the chance to make big money. We all know that sportspeople’s careers are often short and invariably precarious – that for every player who gets a decade out of their chosen profession there will be hundreds more whose potential is blighted, or their best years sawn off, through injury. Within such well-known parameters, why should any young athlete not make the most of commercial interest when it’s offered, and when they are at the height of their appeal?
We rarely hear male athletes told to “concentrate on your sport”, by the way. Anyone who wants a perspective on where we’re at with that need only walk into the cinema this week and catch Air, Ben Affleck’s film about the greatest sponsorship coup in the history of basketball. It’s an open love letter to consumerism and the change it has wrought on sport, as well as a powerful subliminal message to go buy a pair of sneakers.
Michael Jordan, lest we forget, was an unproven quantity when he signed the now-famous deal with Nike. (“A rookie? Who’s never set foot on an NBA court?” asks the company’s chief executive. “That’s the literal definition of rookie, yeah,” replies our marketing-man-underdog-hero.) Jordan went on to fulfil all he dreamed and more, but cautionary tales abound. Derrick Rose was the youngest MVP (most valuabe player) in the history of the NBA when Adidas signed him on a $260m deal, but in the 12 years that followed, he struggled to keep his career afloat through a continuous spate of injuries.
What is it about female tennis players that makes us so paternalistic towards them? Is it because Raducanu is young? Because we fear that she, or her parents, or the experienced professionals who manage her career, don’t know how to make good decisions? Some like to whisper the name of Anna Kournikova like a curse, as if she is somehow the ghost of the future to any appealing and commercially successful young woman.
And yet it seemed we all agreed, back when Raducanu first won a grand slam at 18, that the best thing we could do was leave her alone to live her life. Perhaps, for once, we knew what we were talking about.