Azarenka Reveals Why She Gets 'Distracted' When Her Son Is Preset At Her Matches
WTA
Victoria Azarenka opened up about how she juggles motherhood and being professional athlete while competing on the WTA Tour.
The 33-year-old is one of a few moms competing on the WTA Tour. She's currently competing at the 2023 Wimbledon, and in the fourth round of the event, we'll even see a match of two mothers as Azarenka will take on Elina Svitolina who is motivated like never before after becoming a mother.
While for the Ukrainian everything is new in terms of putting together motherhood and professional life, it's something that Azarenka has been doing for quite some time already as her son is already six years old. At the 2023 Wimbledon, the Belarusian spoke about the relationship with her son.
"Well, it has changed quite a bit throughout years. My son is six-and-a-half years old now, and he started school, so I have a little bit of free time once I drop him off to school during the day."
As probably for every mother, the biggest challenge for the Belarusian is the emotional attachment to her child. She would like to spend every minute of the day with him, but as a professional athlete, Azarenka also needs to be selfish at times.
"But for me the biggest challenge, I would say, was an emotional attachment is kind of carrying that guilt of having time for myself and plan my day to be sometimes a little bit selfish. I had a feeling that I don't want to miss out on really anything when he's growing up."
The former World No. 1 revealed that she's receiving a lot of help from her family and nannies, people that make it possible for her to still compete at the highest level.
"So that was kind of the most challenging part. I'm very privileged person that I have the ability to have help. Maybe not everybody has that, but I have. So I have had help with nannies, with my family, and, you know, they have been my support group through that."
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Now that her son is a bit older, Azarenka faces different problems. Leo wants to travel with his mom and see her play and while the Belarusian would like to make that possible, when she tried it in 's-Hertogenbosch, it wasn't really successful as she crashed out already in the second round.
During the event, Azarenka shared a beautiful moment with her son when they distributed tennis balls to fans in the stands, but now she admitted that having her son present changes her from tennis player to mom, something she can not afford to do if she wants to win.
"So now my son wants to come to my matches (smiling). It's still a bit of a hard feeling for me, because I get a bit distracted. I have tried that in 's-Hertogenbosch, and it was very awesome moment to share, but at the same time it kind of takes me a bit, you know, into my mom mode too much rather than being a tennis player."
