This year’s Paris Olympics will go ahead without yet another big name and it’s Holger Rune who also announced his withdrawal from the Olympic Games.
A few high-ranked players opted to skip this year’s Olympics weeks ago, but these past two days have seen some really unfortunate late withdrawals as well. Jannik Sinner announced his withdrawal from the Games due to tonsillitis, and now Rune has announced his withdrawal due to an injury as well. Unfortunately, neither are shocking because there were rumblings of both withdrawing for a while. That’s especially true for the young Dane, who withdrew from his last match in Hamburg due to a knee problem.
Then his mother announced that Rune was battling a wrist problem as well, and it was actually the wrist that was giving the team more concern ahead of the Olympics. With both the wrist and knee seemingly injured, very few genuinely believed that Rune would make it to Paris. He announced the withdrawal himself on social media, confirming that, ultimately, the wrist is what prevented him from playing.
“I am really sorry that I will be unable to play the Olympics. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to playing and being a part of. I have played with pain in my wrist throughout both the clay and grass season, so I have to take the medical recommendations seriously. I will follow the Olympics from home and cheer on all the Danish athletes and I hope and believe that we can bring home many medals from Paris. Come on Denmark.”
Rune’s season has been bizarre because he’s dealt with on-and-off injuries for the entirety of it. He’s seemingly never been truly healthy, and the wrist injury is nothing new. He’s dealt with it in the past, as he pointed out in his statement; it’s been bothering him for a very long time. His mother even confirmed that it flared up in Rome, which was a while ago.
The very busy schedule obviously weighed heavily on Rune, which is why he didn’t want to skip over events, but he left himself with no choice. The wrist is obviously not going to get better with playing, and he’s been playing on a bad wrist for two months, which has now cost him the Olympics. It’s a shame because it would have been the first Olympics for Rune, who takes great pride in representing Denmark; it’s also a shame because it’s an event on clay, which doesn’t happen often.
Rune is a fantastic player on clay and plays some of his best tennis on that surface, so clearly, he could have had a decent chance of possibly getting a medal. He’ll have to wait four more years for that chance now, but hopefully, the recovery will be swift, and we will see him back on the courts very soon.
