Madison Keys is one of the many players who will miss the 2024 Paris Olympics, and she recently explained why she made the decision.
The American won’t be playing at the upcoming Paris Olympics like many other players, and for her, it was a tough yet natural decision. Many players have opted out of the crazy summer schedule that features a major on clay, a major on grass, and then the Olympic Games on clay.
It’s not an easy schedule on the body, and Keys felt that, given the way the season shaped up when she was forced to miss time due to physical issues, it was the safest decision to skip the event and ease herself into the American summer.
Keys, who joined the likes of Emma Raducanu in skipping the Olympics, explained her decision while competing at the 2024 Eastbourne International, tuning up her game for the Wimbledon Championships.
“It was a really tough decision, but having missed the beginning of the season due to injury and it being clay and then grass and clay straight into hard and obviously I had a really big hard court season last year, so there’s also the kind of the pressure pending that as well. It just felt like the best decision given my many, many years on tour.”
Keys is at a stage in her career where nothing is guaranteed, so she needs to be really sharp with her scheduling and pay attention not to hurt herself. Playing at the Olympics, while an honor, is something she already did and would have been too risky to do right now.
“It was just the kind of the safest decision for me to stay healthy and try to be able to play the rest of the season. And I think that it’s always kind of a bummer when that’s just kind of how things play out.”
“And it unfortunately was in a very different time zone, on a different surface, so it was not an easy decision to make.”
