Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, has insisted that her former coach Stefano Vukov did not mistreat her during their coaching partnership after it was revealed that Vukov is under investigation by the Women’s Tennis Association.
A WTA spokesperson confirmed this week that Vukov is being investigated for allegedly breaking the WTA’s code of conduct and is provisionally suspended from the tour until the investigation has been concluded.
“I can only say and I said it already before that he never mistreated me or it was never anything like that,” said Rybakina. Vukov was her first full-time coach and he worked as the Kazakh player’s primary coach for five years until they split in August 2024. Rybakina later hired the former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic as her new coach and they officially began their collaboration during the off-season. The United Cup this week marked their first tournament together. Ivanisevic spent five years as Novak Djokovic’s coach until 2024 and Djokovic won 12 of his 24 grand slam titles under Ivanisevic’s tutelage.
Rybakina announced on Wednesday Vukov would be returning to her team immediately but she did not specify what his role would be. Vukov is expected to be in Australia to accompany her in Melbourne but while he is provisionally suspended, will not be permitted to attain accreditation for the Australian Open and enter any of the private player areas on-site.
“I’m working with Goran,” said Rybakina. “I’m happy the way we work now for the couple of weeks. As I also said, that Stefano is rejoining the team because I know the person for six years, and there is a lot of things we can do outside of the court too.
“Of course I’m not really happy with the situation. I’m not happy with the comments which I see, especially from the people who are on the tour. It’s active coaches, commentators. I don’t think that it’s fair.”
Vukov told the Athletic by text this week that he had “definitely never abused anyone”. His coaching style has been the subject of criticism from numerous prominent figures in the game, including the 22-time doubles grand slam champion Pam Shriver, who coaches the Olympic silver medallist Donna Vekic.
Shriver responded to the news that Vukov would be rejoining Rybakina’s team with a post on X: “It’s time for our entire sport to finally stand up to known abuse and cult-like manipulations of players,” she wrote. “This is a very sad situation and my prayers are with ER.”
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Rybakina said: “The only thing I can say is, like, he never mistreated me. I have respect to him for everything he did from the very beginning when I was [ranked] 200 all the way what we did, like, I don’t know. You can name me other coaches who had the same success with players who have been 200 and then winning grand slam and being at the top.”
