The curious case of Sesil Karatantcheva

Sesil Karatantcheva is a Bulgarian born Kazak Professonial Tennis Player. At the moment she is ranked a modest world number 84 in the WTA charts and she even lost her first round match at the US Open a couple of days back with a modest scoreline.So you must be wondering what is so special about this player that I am writing a whole article for her?At the first look Sesil Karatantcheva would appear like any other normal tennis player trying to grind her way up the WTA charts. But that is only if you don’t know the history and struggle she went through for the game she loved so much.

Sesil Karatantcheva turned PRO at a tender age of 14 in 2003 and right away made an impact at the highest level. In 2004 she reached the second round of a high profile WTA Event at Indian Wells and started a war of words with the then world number 1 Maria Sharapova, saying the latter had refused a hitting session with Sesil citing her low WTA rankings. Although Sharapova won the match in tough 3 sets, everyone was impressed by the way the youngster played and moreover by the attitude she had. By that time she was already being projected as the new superstar in womens tennis. She even qualified for the US open the same year, before losing to the eventual champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.

2005 was the breakthrough year for Sesil. She played all the 4 Grand Slams that year and became the youngest ever women tennis player to reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam when she did so at Rolland Garros. She had a career high ranking of 35 after this result. She even defeated former World number one Venus Williams enroute her quarterfinal performance. She along with Sania Mirza were considered as the finds of that particular year. And with the age on her side, it appeared Sesil was here to stay.But destiny had some other script, and Sesil failed a dope test for the banned substance nandroline late in 2005 and after subsequent hearings the ITF handed Sesil a 2-year ban in Jan 2006, the harshest for any women player in the history of tennis .For the next 2 years Sesil did not play any professional tennis match, but she continued to practice as she did before. Many players might had just changed their profession but Sesil was quoted as saying that she could not see herself earning a livelihood from any other profession but tennis. Many doubted that after spending two years away from the International circuit , she would not be able to make a comeback.

In 2009 she again made headlines when she made a deal with Kazakh Tennis Federation and announced she would take up Kazakh Citizenship reported for monetary help. This left a number of her Bulgarian fans cheated and deserted who had supported her during her ban, but Sesil repeatedly said she had nothing against Bulgaria and the decision was a protest against the Bulgarian Tennis Federations policy which forced her to take the extreme step. Last year she again made headlines when she stated that the now Bulgarian PM sexually harassed her as a 14-year-old tennis player when he was the country’s interior minister in 2004.The allegations which Boyko Borissov denied.

For now she is making gradual progress on the WTA charts slowly climbing into the top 100 of women’s ranking, which is a big achievement considering the fact that she did waste 2 years of her prime to the ban. But it still remains to be seen whether see could defy some more odds and reach a level where she was before the ban.