Limit romance with social media Olympic champ warns Raducanu
Experience cannot be bought in the market and sharing it with loved ones is no doubt worthy of commendation.
Former Olympic champion Monica Puig has urged Emma Raducanu to focus less on social media if she is to return to the top of tennis and repeat her stunning US Open title feat.
Puig, who became the first ever Puerto Rican to win an Olympic gold at Rio 2016, warned that social media is a ‘toxic’ environment, especially for a young tennis star like Raducanu.
The young Brit stunned the sport by triumphing at Flushing Meadows as an 18-year-old qualifier in 2021 but has since struggled to kick on in her career.
Plagued by bad luck in the two years since, Raducanu has suffered from blisters and other minor injuries, chopped and changed her coaches and even tested positive for coronavirus whilst preparing for a major tournament.
Puig admitted she ‘sympathises’ with the British star and believes she still has the skillset to return to the summit of the sport.
‘I saw her many times courtside during the US Open when she did win that title and she is a very talented player,’ Puig told Sky Sports.
‘Physically, she’s still very young. I’m not going to say she’s already a very established player with a lot of experience. She won that US Open title having not played many WTA events and she hasn’t had a full calendar.
‘She still needs time to develop and time to find out who she is as a tennis player, who she is as a person and I can sympathise with her because when I won the Olympics it came out of nowhere.
‘I didn’t have as much media attention as she does and I can only imagine coming from the UK where something like that is so big. It just exploded.’
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Since her meteoric rise to stardom, Raducanu has regularly used social media to promote her brand deals, developing a sponsorship portfolio that includes Nike, Porsche, Evian, Dior, Wilson, HSBC, Vodafone and British Airways.
Puig warned Raducanu not to ‘focus’ on social media, even if it is an effective way of ‘boosting’ one’s brand.
‘Don’t focus on social media because we all know that social media is a great tool to boost your brand but it can be toxic, especially for a person like Raducanu who has so many people following her and so many people who want to see her succeed and also a lot of people who don’t,’ she added.
‘You’re not going to have everybody who loves you. You’re going to have those who are not going to like you.