LONDON (AP) \u2014 As Marta Kostyuk played on Centre Court at Wimbledon on Wednesday, her compatriots in Ukraine were dealing with another deadly attack by Russia on Kyiv.<\/p>\n
It’s been the same for much of Kostyuk\u2019s run to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
On Monday, after Russian missiles struck residential buildings close to where Kostyuk’s parents live, she had to block that out to play her fourth-round match at the Grand Slam tournament. Last week, Russia hammered the Ukrainian capital with an 11-hour drone and missile attack that killed at least 21 civilians.<\/p>\n
For Kostyuk, every day is about finding a way to focus on tennis while not shutting her eyes to what is going on at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not easy to disconnect entirely,\u201d Kostyuk said after beating Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 6-2 to reach the last four at Wimbledon for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really tough for me last week when the first big attack happened,” the 24-year-old Kostyuk continued. “Then on Monday they ruined like four streets of residential buildings. It was like five kilometers away from where my parents live. Again, another difficult night and a lot of dead people, innocent people, kids. It\u2019s not easy. I try to be aware of everything that\u2019s going on. Of course, I try for these things not to influence me too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 12th-seeded Kostyuk is into her second straight Grand Slam semifinal after losing to Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva in the last four at the French Open. The two did not shake hands before that match, which has become the standard procedure for meetings between Russian and Ukrainian players since the war broke out in 2022.<\/p>\n
Like in most sports, Russian players have competed as neutrals on the men’s and women’s tennis tours since then. But the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday provisionally lifted its ban on Russia and recommended that individual sports drop the neutral status for athletes.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin on Wednesday welcomed that decision as an \u201cimportant step\u201d toward reinstating the rights of Russian athletes.<\/p>\n
Kostyuk had a different take.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy thoughts are that it\u2019s terrible,\u201d Kostyuk said. \u201cI think it\u2019s very, very far from fair play for all the countries involved here, not just for Ukraine. I 100% don\u2019t agree with this decision. … I just want to go out there and hopefully beat every single Russian I play in the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are no Russian singles players left in the Wimbledon tournament. Kostyuk will face Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic on Thursday. In the other semifinal, American Coco Gauff takes on another Czech player in Karolina Muchova.<\/p>\n
Kostyuk is the second woman from Ukraine to reach the semifinals at Wimbledon after Elina Svitolina did it in 2019 and 2023.<\/p>\n
Svitolina lost on both occasions. So what would it mean for Ukraine if Kostyuk becomes the country’s first finalist?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping,\u201d she said, \u201cit would mean a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 As Marta Kostyuk played on Centre Court at Wimbledon on Wednesday, her compatriots in Ukraine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,4452,5,8,21234,21282,20921,4451,21281,8982,25,821,26,817,21,22,13291,2258,2196],"class_list":["post-30716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-coco-gauff","tag-elina-svitolina","tag-italy","tag-jasmine-paolini","tag-karolina-muchova","tag-kyiv","tag-linda-noskova","tag-marta-kostyuk","tag-marta-kostyuk-wimbledon-russia-ioc","tag-mirra-andreeva","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-32564-ap-online-tennis-news","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}