An 18-year-old waiting for A-Level results – A closer look at Emma Raducanu

Emma Raducanu’s dream Wimbledon debut continued as she made it through to the last 16 on Saturday.

The 18-year-old continued her fairytale week by beating world number 45 Sorana Cirstea on Court One.

Here, the PA news agency takes a closer look at Raducanu.

Educating Emma

This summer is not all about Wimbledon for Raducanu as she is awaiting results for her A-Levels. She has been combining her studies with her tennis over the last 12 months, choosing not to travel to lower-level tournaments abroad, and sat exams in maths and economics at Newstead School. Despite her intelligence, Raducanu insists she is focused on a career in tennis.

Mixed heritage

Raducanu was actually born in Toronto in 2002 to a Chinese mother and Romanian father and the family moved over to England when she was two. Although she has lived in London, she has fond memories of going to see her grandmother in Romania. She said: “My grandma, Mamiya, still lives in central Bucharest. I go back a couple times a year, stay with her, see her. It’s really nice. I love the food, to be honest. I mean, the food is unbelievable. And my grandma’s cooking is also something special. I do have ties to Bucharest.”

A sporting youth

It was perhaps inevitable Raducanu would have a career in professional sport, given the way her father pushed her as a youngster. She started off attending ballet classes, but her father decided sport was the way forward and had his daughter do horse riding, swimming, tap dancing, basketball, skiing, golf, go-karting and motocross, all alongside her tennis practice.

A recent debut

It is incredible to think that Raducanu only made her first WTA Tour main draw appearance last month at the Nottingham Open. She lost 6-4 6-3 to compatriot Harriet Dart in the first round before making the quarter-finals of a lower-level tournament at the same venue the following week. That persuaded Wimbledon to offer her a wild card into the main draw and the rest is history.

Success at an early age

She has some sort of form at Wimbledon, having made it to the 2018 juniors quarter-finals where she came up against future French Open winner Iga Swiatek. Raducanu followed that up with a run to the same stage of the US Open juniors a few months later. She won the first ITF junior title she was allowed to compete in, aged just 13.