For the first time tennis player Amanda Anisimova has made it to the Wimbledon finals, but the 23 year old has overcome major personal adversities and heartbreak to get where she is today
Just before Amanda Anisimova was poised to take on a major career moment, she suffered a massive personal loss, that left her totally heartbroken and unable to compete.
It wasn’t just a crucial professional moment, because she was set to celebrate another major landmark: turning 18 years old. But instead of celebrating, tragedy struck.
Her father, Konstanin Anisimov, with whom she was very close and had acted as her junior tennis coach, died of a heart attack in 2019 – he was aged only 52.
He had recently separated from his wife and Amanda’s mum Olga, but, per the New York Times, the family was still “in contact” despite the split.
So when Olga didn’t hear from Konstantin for a number of days, something that wasn’t like him, she started to worry and called the authorities.
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When they arrived at his home and found the door locked, and had to force their way into the property, only to tragically find Konstantin “dead on the floor.
Bereft, Amanda, now 23, understandably, made the decision to immediately pull out of the major tournament that she had been prepping for: her home country’s grand slam – the US Open.
Konstantin – born in Russia where he worked in the finance industry before emigrating to America with Amanda’s mum, Olga, in 1998 – played a crucial role in making Amanda the tennis player she is today, and she has said losing him so young was the “worst thing that ever happened to me”.
“It was very tough,” she told the New York Post in 2020, “But you can’t change it, and you have to get back to life.”
Amanda has certainly come a long way – just last year, she was knocked out of Wimbledon in the qualifiers, and now she is poised to take on Iga Swiatek on centre court, after knocking out Aryna Sabalenka – the world number one – in the semis.
Her resilience is obvious, but when she first returned to the tour, she was still battling her grief, and called out a journalist who questioned her about whether she was still “unsettled” by the loss of her father, per the Express, which caused her to burst into tears and reply: “Do we really have to talk about this so fast after a match?
“The only thing that’s helped me is playing tennis,” Amanda has said about the devastating loss of her father, “and being on the court. That’s the only thing that makes me happy, and I know it would make him happy, so that’s the way it is.”
A coach – Nick Saviano -who has long worked with Amanda and knew her father well has said to the New York Times, “Both parents put so much into Amanda’s tennis…It’s really exciting to see it all start to emerge and so very sad to know that Konstantin will not be there to enjoy seeing all his dreams come to fruition.”
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