“I literally couldn’t see the ball through tears. I could barely breathe.” Emma Raducanu’s haunting words still echo from that nightmarish experience in the Dubai Open, where a man who was in attendance during her match against Karolina Muchova had made her feel uncomfortable. The WTA later revealed he had exhibited “fixated behavior.” While her rocky 2025 form raised eyebrows earlier this season, that terrifying moment overshadowed everything. Fast forward, and just as players prepare for Wimbledon, another British star, Katie Boulter, finds herself battling online abuse. But Raducanu, no stranger to the storm, has stepped up once again, offering raw honesty on how she faced the darkness and kept swinging. Wondering what she said?
In a recent heart-to-heart with BBC Sport, former US Open champion Emma Raducanu was asked whether she had heard about the terrible abuse fellow Brit Katie Boulter has been facing online, and if things have gotten any better for herself. The former US champion’s response was honest and unfiltered. “No, it hasn’t. But I’m glad Katie spoke about it, and I’m glad she, you know, took a stand because it is something that we all go through, we all have to deal with, and some of the different levels and all of that are pretty extreme. And yeah, it’s tough, and it’s very difficult what to do about it.” Her words struck with weight, spoken by someone who’s walked through her fire.
The interviewer didn’t stop there, though. Asked how she handled the emotional aftermath after her incident at Dubai, Raducanu revealed, “Yeah, I try and stay away, try not to read the comments or look at the messages because, you know, it makes you upset… it’s pretty difficult. And it doesn’t matter how many kind of positive comments you read, you always kind of remember the more negative ones. So I try to stay away.”
But what exactly happened to Katie Boulter to spark this raw conversation in the 1st place?
Katie Boulter (Source: Instagram// @katiecboulter)
Boulter, chasing a 3rd straight title at the Nottingham Open, began her campaign with a commanding 6-2, 6-2 win over 44th-ranked Lulu Sun a week ago. Her run, however, came to an end in the quarterfinal. Yet it wasn’t her performance that dominated headlines in the first round; it was the barrage of online hate she exposed.
In a BBC interview, Boulter unveiled a nightmare of abuse hurled her way during and after her French Open loss. One message chillingly read, “Hope you get cancer.” Another said, “Go to hell. I lost money my mother sent me.” A third threatened her family, demanding she buy “candles and a coffin” and promising to desecrate her grandmother’s grave.
After her win on June 17, Boulter even reflected, “I looked on my phone this morning and there were hundreds of messages reacting to it [the interview].” For many, it was a wake-up call, proof that behind the glamor of pro tennis lies a brutal, often invisible war fought in the shadows of social media.
The story is developing…
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