Elina Svitolina has expressed that she feels severe pain after her mid-match retirement from the Australian Open fourth-round match against Linda Noskova due to injury.
When the 19th-seeded Svitolina decided to give up in the opening set, the teenage Czech was ahead by three games. With the score at 2-0, the Ukrainian had called a medical timeout. Before she retired, she went back to the court and lost another game.
A disappointed Svitolina said in her post-match press conference that she locked her back during a spasm. The defeat prevented Svitolina from moving on to the Melbourne quarterfinals, where she would have faced off against compatriots Marta Kostyuk and Dayana Yastremska.
She expressed her feelings after the win and said: “I got a spasm. I don’t know exactly what it is, but like shooting pain in the first game, the last two points couldn’t do anything. I completely locked my back. Just very sad. It locked. My lower back is completely locked. So, yeah, I’m really in pain, even walking and turning. I cannot move side-to-side. Yeah, very strange.”
She further added: “I think I never had that before—the shooting pain like this. I had some injuries to my back before and it was just tiredness the next day of the match, but this one was really out of nowhere. I felt like someone shot me in the back, so yeah.”
Elina Svitolina in 2024
At the moment ranked no.23, Svitolina played her last match on the 22nd of January when she had to retire when playing against world no.50 Linda Noskova in the 4th round and the scoreline was 3-0 .
Presently, during this year the Ukrainian owns an overall 7-2 match record. Elina Svitolina’s best performance of the present year was getting to the final in Auckland.