Raducanu withdraws from Wimbledon with stress fracture in leg

Wimbledon will begin Monday without Emma Raducanu. The British No. 1, who was the No. 30 seed in the women's draw, announced her withdrawal from the tournament on Sunday evening due to a stress fracture. 

Raducanu had been dealing with what she described as a "niggle" in her lower leg since reaching the final at the HSBC Championships at the Queen's Club earlier this month -- her second final on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz this year. In a statement posted to social media confirming her withdrawal, Raducanu said that medical tests revealed that the issue worsened into a stress fracture.

“I’ve done everything possible to try to get to the start line tomorrow but after a final scan tonight ... I’ve been medically advised to stop pushing through," she wrote, less than 12 hours before she was due to take to No. 1 Court against Croatia's Antonia Ruzic.

"Playing at Wimbledon, in front of a home crowd, means everything to me, so this is really difficult to process."

Concerns about the 2021 US Open champion's readiness to compete at Wimbledon grew over the past week, beginning when Raducanu was spotted wearing a protective boot on Wednesday. She returned to the court on Saturday to test her fitness and wore strapping on her lower right leg in a training session with her team. She later cut a practice session with Anna Kalinskaya short.

Speaking to the media in her pre-tournament press conference earlier on Sunday, Raducanu affirmed her intentions to play. The 23-year-old said she was doing "everything" she could in a race to be fit for the tournament -- though she wouldn't put a percentage number on her likelihood of actually stepping on court -- and that she "probably pushed beyond anything that I would for any other tournament" in her efforts to do so.

"I think risk is always a factor," she said. "I think a lot of players are probably managing things. I think there are certain tournaments you're willing to do more for, put yourself on the line more for, risk more for. For me, of course, Wimbledon is that."

"It's difficult waking up each day, not knowing how it's going to be," she added. "Not knowing whether you're in or out causes lot of uncertainty. All I can do is my best every day. That's what I'm doing, whether that's the treatments, whether that's the practice. I know I'm putting everything I possibly can into each day. With the people around me, they're pushing me in the right way."

The stress fracture is the latest in a list of physical problems for Raducanu this season. She could not train properly for most of the off-season due to another foot injury, then struggled with a virus for much of February. Raducanu then missed WTA 1000 events in Miami, Madrid and Rome due to lingering concerns from the illness, and confirmed she had been dealing with the leg problem since the end of the clay-court swing.