Emma Raducanu is revealing more about a stalking incident by a "fixated" fan last month while she was playing in the UAE's Dubai Tennis Championships. The 22-year-old British tennis star says that when she saw the unidentified man in the stands at her match on Feb. 18, a day after he'd freaked her out by approaching her in a public area and leaving her a note, she could "barely breathe" and became "very distraught," per Sky News. "I saw him in the first game of the match and I was like, 'I don't know how I'm going to finish,'" she says. "I literally couldn't see the ball through tears." The AP notes that at one point, after spotting the man, Raducanu "was in tears and stood behind the umpire's chair."
Raducanu says the man—who was removed from the match by security, hit with a restraining order, and banned from future tennis tournaments—had also popped up at her matches in Singapore, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, per NBC News. It's understandable why Raducanu might be extra shaken: It's not the first time she's had to deal with this kind of behavior. In 2022, when she was 19, a 35-year-old former Amazon driver was convicted of stalking her, leading the tennis player to put out a statement noting, "I feel like my freedom has been taken away from me." That stalker was hit with a five-year restraining order mandating he stay away from Raducanu. Now, after taking a bit of a "breather" following the latest incident, Raducanu says she's feeling "a lot better," per Sky. (More Emma Raducanu stories.)
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