TURIN, Italy – As professional tennis took a few minutes Friday night at the ATP Tour Finals to honor a number of players who announced their retirement from the sport this year, one of them stepped onto the court at the stadium. Pala Alpitour in military uniform. tired.
It was Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine, whose retirement was different from all the others.
Stakhovsky’s tennis career, which included eight ATP singles and doubles titles and appearances at the 2012 Olympics, abruptly ended in February when he became a soldier. Stakhovsky, 36, at the time knew nothing about shooting, throwing grenades or shooting rifles. Now, after spending months near the front lines in eastern Ukraine, he knows a lot.
“Everybody out there is tired,” he said Friday night after the ceremony, referring to Ukrainian forces who know that even if they achieve success, Russia will continue to kill civilians and attack civilians. infrastructure goals. “A lot of Ukrainian soldiers are dying, and I guess that’s the only thing we think about when we’re doing it.”
In recent months, he has patrolled and helped clear the recaptured Ukrainian cities. His next rotation in the eastern region of Donetsk begins on December 18.
It is an existence that has little in common with the rare life he lived before, traveling the world playing tennis and running his winery, in Zakarpattia, near the western border of Ukraine, where he grows merlot, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and other grape varieties.
The previous existence rarely comes to mind, says Stakhovsky, although he still keeps in touch with professional players like Elina Svitolina, who send support and seek news from the battlefield. Most have left the country to pursue their careers and remain safe while sending finances and other forms of support home.
“I think it gets harder when you’re out,” he says of those who have passed away, as they hunt for bits of information, worry about family and friends, and struggle to adjust. War as a way of life. “Unfortunately, our bodies, humans, we can adapt to do just about anything. So you adapt to shelling. You adapt to fear.
As he spoke, Russia’s Andrey Rublev took to the field against Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas. Russia’s Deniil Medvedev played against Serbia’s Novak Djokovic that afternoon.
Stakhovsky and other players from Ukraine have said that Russian and Belarusian players should be banned from playing during the war. For the most part, professional tennis did not take that step, instead banning those countries from team competition and removing any symbols of their countries, such as their flags.
Sports leaders say it is unfair to hold Russian and Belarusian athletes accountable for their government’s actions, and although Stakhovsky acknowledges that view, he sees the silence of most Russian players are shameful. Rublev is the only male player to openly plead for peace and support criticism of the war.
“For the most part, all Russian athletes or Russian tennis players are silent, and they are neutral and they say, you know, ‘it’s politics for me,'” Stakhovsky said. speak. “It’s not politics. It was a war.”
History, and possibly even their children, will judge them, he said.
“At the end of the day, when the war is over and the questions are asked by their kids or whoever it is, ‘What did you do to make that not happen? What did you do to make it stop?’ they won’t be able to answer that question, because they don’t do anything,” Stakhovsky said. “They were silent, and they did nothing.”
