Once Emma Raducanu had the temerity to win the US Open and thrust herself into the spotlight, it did not take long for her to become a punchbag for armchair sports fans in Britain.
No athlete who is injury prone needs reminding they are injury prone, but in Raducanu’s case there is a gleeful pile-on to ensure she is endlessly aware.
The 23-year-old should even just retire, according to some experts in basements, because she would clearly rather pursue various business ventures than focus on tennis.
So go the takes from people who have never actually met Raducanu, which are impossible to ignore because they arrive in droves whenever she withdraws from a tournament due to injury.
Admittedly, and unfortunately, that is a frequent occurrence, with her latest US Open withdrawal making for six grand slams missed since her unprecedented victory in New York five years ago.
Raducanu also missed Wimbledon due to the injury (Photo: PA)If there were any well wishes or hopes of a speedy recovery, they were hard to find across the various social media posts confirming her absence – due to a stress fracture that also kept her out of Wimbledon – and one can only hope Raducanu ignores the clamour that follows her announcements.
We already know though that she cannot escape the noise entirely. In 2023 she said, “sometimes I think to myself I wish I’d never won the US Open, I wish that didn’t happen”.
That win put her on a pedestal, a qualifier turned champion whose career trajectory changed after three wild weeks where not a single set was dropped.
It was an underdog story with a peculiar ending, because she actually won, and that is something this country cannot seem to handle.
Give us either sustained success – admittedly a relatively new British phenomena, thanks to London 2012, Andy Murray and Lewis Hamilton – or the glorious failure of old – Tim Henman and his four Wimbledon semi-final exits, or Jimmy White and his six World Snooker Championship final defeats.
Whereas Raducanu falls somewhere in between, a superstar quickly built up and now being obsessively torn down.
There are some likenesses, with Raducanu in the rare bracket of Britons who conquered the sporting world as teenagers.
Luke Littler, 19, has an army of supporters and is almost single-handedly boosting darts’ popularity, but he must also contend with a troop who cannot handle his supposed arrogance and therefore boo.
Luke Littler is carrying darts but also has his critics (Photo: PA)Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen, meanwhile, faced similar treatment, adored and vilified, with the latter also suffering a spate of injury problems throughout his career.
Like Rooney and Owen before them, Littler and Raducanu do not owe anyone anything, but it is almost as though early success gave supporters a right to demand more.
And this is where Raducanu differs, because unlike Littler she has not been able to sustain success at a trophy-winning level. She remains in the world’s top 50 but cannot go toe-to-toe with the very best. She can go far in tournaments, but has not backed up her 2021 major victory with any WTA title since.
And that almost seems to please her critics more, as though there is somehow joy in pointing out the US Open was an anomaly.
So what if it was? Raducanu could retire now and call herself a grand slam champion. Only 133 women can say that, and she is just one of 18 active female players who has won a major.
She has already achieved more than 99 per cent of people who have picked up a racket, and yet somehow that will never be enough.
Win young at your peril.
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