Roman Kelecic, who recently worked with Emma Raducanu again after coaching her as a junior, gave disturbing new details about the creep who brought her to tears at the 2025 Dubai Championships.
Raducanu suddenly stopped playing after the second game of her match in Dubai against former French Open runner-up Karolina Muchova. She hid behind the umpire’s chair and cried after communicating something.
The WTA confirmed after Muchova’s straight-set victory that a man in the crowd caused Raducanu to become so upset. He had shown what the governing body called “fixated behavior” the day before attending her match.
After the WTA’s words about the incident, Raducanu made a short statement confirming that she was okay and thanking Muchova, who comforted her while she cried, for being a good sport during the concerning incident.
However, Kelecic confirmed to the Croatian outlet Net that the stalker’s behavior toward Raducanu stretched back much further than the Dubai Championships. He followed the Briton at her last four tournaments since the 2025 Australian Open.
“This man followed her to Singapore, to Abu Dhabi, where I was with her, again in Doha, now in Dubai, and we noticed him. But initially we thought he was a fan, an admirer, because Emma is a really big tennis star with a huge fan base. Until he got physically close to her, started having contact in the form of selfies, hugging, etc.”
Kelecic said the stalker waited until the only moment he and a security guard were absent to approach Raducanu at a restaurant on Monday in Dubai.
“That was the only moment in a month where I, the fitness coach, the security guard who was with us, was not with her at that moment. So, that man was assessing the situation and looking for the best moment to get closer to her. He had a strategy that was terrifying, he thought everything through, calculated it.”
“It’s terrifying how much he, in essence, thought about it all and planned it. His strategy worked, and it was to get closer to her. That evening we reported it immediately and again in the morning, when she was playing the match, because her safety is the most important thing to us.”
According to Kelecic, Raducanu, who worked without a permanent coach during the Middle Eastern swing after Nick Cavaday split with the 22-year-old for health and family reasons, noticed the stalker in the crowd at the Dubai Championships before her team.
“Three or four hours before the match we have a photo of that stalker. Not only us, the entire security at the tournament has his photo and everyone knows who he is.”
“The first game, two points gone, 15-15, Emma is on the other side of the court and she’s showing us something. At that moment, we didn’t know what it was. Emma loses the first game and runs to us, crying, shouting, ‘here he is, here he is, here he is.’
Luckily, the stalker was removed from the stadium and subsequently banned from all WTA events.
