PARIS, France, Jun 3 – Iga Swiatek continued her remarkable winning run with a 35th straight victory against Coco Gauff in the French Open final on Saturday.
Here, AFP Sport looks at three things about the Polish world number one:
Sporting genes
— Swiatek, now a two-time Roland Garros champion, has sporting pedigree in her family, as her father Tomasz was a rower who competed at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Tomasz was part of the Poland quadruple sculls team, finishing seventh, but wanted his daughter to focus on an individual sport.
Iga followed in her father’s footsteps by competing at last year’s Tokyo Games, and although she did not win a medal, she enjoyed the experience.
“Living in an Olympic Village was really unforgettable and even though it’s totally different than anything I’ve ever experienced on (the) tennis tour, I wouldn’t change it. It was great,” she wrote on Instagram.
Her sister Agata also had dreams of becoming a professional tennis player, but suffered from a series of injuries.
Bookworm
— The world’s best player is a keen reader and has been turning the pages during her Roland Garros run.
“It was a hard one to digest because it’s about basically the purpose of life,” she said of reading “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”, a New York Times bestseller by Yuval Noah Harari. “I took a lot in terms of like kind of broadening my horizons.”
Swiatek has since started Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers”, but perhaps her focus is now more on her tennis.
“Not (finished it) yet. It’s going slowly.”
Music lover
— The 21-year-old listens to classic rock tracks by bands Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, Pearl Jam and AC/DC before matches.
She enjoys “alternative music, jazz, soul and pop” in her spare time and has said the only genre yet to get her attention is rap.
“It’s always rock music. There are five songs from Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Gorillaz and Pearl Jam and they are on repeat,” Swiatek told the BBC.
“If I have time before I go on to court then I will listen to the last two again.”
