Tennis, Osaka: “It was necessary to stop, even if I was ashamed”

There was a before and an after in Naomi Osaka’s tennis career. It’s about Roland Garros 2021, when she withdrew from the tournament after missing the press conferences players are forced to attend. The former world number 1 justified her choice by speaking of “long periods of depression suffered by the 2018 US Open” – the first Slam she won – and the “vulnerability and anxiety” that public speaking caused her at that moment. From then on, Osaka decided to take a break from the spotlight, between periods off the pitch and performances away from the best versions of her.

The stop

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The Japanese, who slipped to number 42 in the ranking today, broke her silence on what happened on Steve Colbert’s The Late Show. “I felt it was necessary to stop, even if at that moment I was a little ashamed because as an athlete they have always taught me that you have to be strong and overcome everything, which was a very precious lesson for my life – he said -. But at at one point I asked myself: ‘Why? Not in a bad way, but if I feel like this why do I have to carry on like this when I can face the situation, resolve it and continue on my path?'”. A period that she used to get back on track and in which she, she said, “I learned a lot”.

The return

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So after Roland Garros, Osaka took a break from tennis. The first tournament in which she competed again was the Olympics of the same year, when the closeness of many colleagues helped her get back on track: “I locked myself at home for a while after everything that had happened. When I got back on the court, so many athletes came to talk to me about it and I was so surprised and honored, because those were people I watched on TV and I felt really supported,” she explained. If the lights of the spotlight continue to remain indigestible to her, life in disguise, as a superstar infiltrated into the world of ordinary people, instead she doesn’t mind at all: “When I travel I always wear overalls, a sweatshirt and a wool cap. I think many mistake me for a boy. I like him very much, because people recognize me much more by name than by my appearance. There was a time when the lady at the controls called me saying ‘sir, come forward’, she read the my passport and was shocked. I always have so much fun.”