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Aryna Sabalenka's impressive grand slam streak goes on at Wimbledon

Aryna Sabalenka's impressive grand slam streak goes on at Wimbledon

The world number one is yet to drop a set but has been pushed in all of her matches so far, with her latest scrap seeing her overcome former doubles partner Mertens 6-4 7-6 (4).
There was not the same sense of jeopardy as there had been in Sabalenka's late-night duel with Emma Raducanu in the third round, with the top seed never behind but unable to shake off Mertens until the second-set tie-break.
A post shared by Aryna Sabalenka (@arynasabalenka)
'Roland Garros was also quite challenging,' said Sabalenka, who has now made at least the quarter-finals on her last 11 appearances at grand slams.
'I love these challenges. I think every time you go through these tough matches, you kind of bring your game to the next level, and it helps to improve your game as well.
'I feel like, with every match I'm playing here, I'm getting better and better mentally and also physically. So I love these tough challenges. I only hope to get better and better in each round.'
The victory was her 46th of the season – way ahead of any other player, with only four women managing more wins in the whole of 2024.
Sabalenka is extending her lead at the top of the rankings with every success having missed Wimbledon last year through injury, but she is desperate to add a fourth grand slam title to her CV after heartbreaking losses in the finals of the Australian Open and French Open this year.
She is yet to reach a Wimbledon final but it would be a huge shock if she falls before then this year, with numerous upsets on her side of the draw meaning she finds the unlikely figure of Laura Siegemund awaiting her next.
The 37-year-old German had won only two singles matches here in her career prior to this year but made it through to the last eight with a 6-3 6-2 victory over Argentinian lucky loser Solana Sierra.
Siegemund has an unusual game based on heavy slice and attacking the net, and she insisted she will not be fazed by facing Sabalenka.
She said: 'Of course I am surprised. If you would have told me I play quarter-finals here, I would have never believed it.
'On the other hand, it's a very simple math always in tennis. You have an opponent, either you find good solutions and you execute well, you go forward, or you don't, and you don't go forward.
'As I said after big wins before, I have this game and this maybe boldness to take out big names. I've always had that, just maybe because I don't care who is on the other side. In a positive, respectful way, I don't care.'
It is proving to be a good tournament for the veterans, with 34-year-old Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova ending a nine-year wait to make a second quarter-final by seeing off Britain's Sonay Kartal 7-6 (3) 6-4.
In the last eight, Pavlyuchenkova will take on 13th seed Amanda Anisimova, who reached this stage of Wimbledon for the second time with a 6-2 5-7 6-4 victory over young Czech Linda Noskova.
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Mirra Andreeva flies into quarter-finals with straight-sets win over Navarro
Mirra Andreeva flies into quarter-finals with straight-sets win over Navarro

The Guardian

time23 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Mirra Andreeva flies into quarter-finals with straight-sets win over Navarro

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Why don't we trust technology in sport?
Why don't we trust technology in sport?

BBC News

time24 minutes ago

  • BBC News

Why don't we trust technology in sport?

For a few minutes on Sunday afternoon, Wimbledon's Centre Court became the perfect encapsulation of the current tensions between humans and Britain's Sonay Kartal hit a backhand long on a crucial point, her opponent Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova knew it had landed out. She said the umpire did too. Television replays proved the electronic line-calling system - which means humans have been fully replaced this year following earlier trials - remained ticked by. The human umpire eventually declared the point should be time Pavlyuchenkova lost it. She went on to win the match but, in that moment, she told the umpire the game had been 'stolen' from her. 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But it is still better than humans."He's right: the tech is demonstrably more accurate than the human eye across various sports. Diego Maradona's notorious 'Hand of God' goal at the 1986 World Cup would probably not have got past artificial electronic line-calling (ELC) system has been developed by the firm uses 12 cameras to track balls across each court and also monitors the feet of players as they serve. The data is analysed in real time with the help of AI, and the whole thing is managed by a team of 50 human operators. ELC has a rotation of 24 different human voices to announce its decisions, recorded by various tennis club members and tour may use artificial intelligence to analyse the footage, but the All England Lawn Tennis Club says AI is not used to directly officiate. The club also says it remains confident in the tech, and CEO Sally Bolton told the BBC she believes it's the best in the business."We have the most accurate officiating we could possibly have here," she following Sunday's incident, it can now no longer be manually deactivated. So why don't we trust this kind of tech more?One reason is a collectively very strong, in-built sense of "fairness", argues Professor Gina Neff from Cambridge University."Right now, in many areas where AI is touching our lives, we feel like humans understand the context much better than the machine," she said."The machine makes decisions based on the set of rules it's been programmed to adjudicate. But people are really good at including multiple values and outside considerations as well - what's the right call might not feel like the fair call."Prof Neff believes that to frame the debate as whether humans or machines are "better" isn't fair either."It's the intersection between people and systems that we have to get right," she said."We have to use the best of both to get the best decisions."Human oversight is a foundation stone of what is known as "responsible" AI. In other words, deploying the tech as fairly and safely as means someone, somewhere, monitoring what the machines are that this is working very smoothly in football, where VAR - the video assistant referee - has long caused was, for example, officially declared to be a "significant human error" that resulted in VAR failing to rectify an incorrect decision by the referee when Tottenham played Liverpool in 2024, ruling a vital goal to be offside when it wasn't and unleashing a barrage of Premier League said VAR was 96.4% accurate during "key match incidents" last season, although chief football officer Tony Scholes admitted "one single error can cost clubs". Norway is said to be on the verge of discontinuing human failings, a perceived lack of human control plays its part in our reticence to rely on tech in general, says entrepreneur Azeem Azhar, who writes the tech newsletter The Exponential View."We don't feel we have agency over its shape, nature and direction," he said in an interview with the World Economic Forum."When technology starts to change very rapidly, it forces us to change our own beliefs quite quickly because systems that we had used before don't work as well in the new world of this new technology."Our sense of tech unease doesn't just apply to sport. The very first time I watched a demo of an early AI tool trained to spot early signs of cancer from scans, it was extremely good at it (this was a few years before today's NHS trials) - considerably more accurate than the human issue, its developers told me, was that people being told they had cancer did not want to hear that a machine had diagnosed it. They wanted the opinion of human doctors, preferably several of them, to concur before they would accept autonomous cars - with no human driver at the wheel - have done millions of miles on the roads in countries like the US and China, and data shows they have statistically fewer accidents than humans. Yet a survey carried out by YouGov last year suggested 37% of Brits would feel "very unsafe" inside one.I've been in several and while I didn't feel unsafe, I did - after the novelty had worn off - begin to feel a bit bored. And perhaps that is also at the heart of the debate about the use of tech in refereeing sport."What [sports organisers] are trying to achieve, and what they are achieving by using tech is perfection," says sports journalist Bill Elliott - editor at large of Golf Monthly."You can make an argument that perfection is better than imperfection but if life was perfect we'd all be bored to death. So it's a step forward and also a step sideways into a different kind of world - a perfect world - and then we are shocked when things go wrong."

Jannik Sinner gets reprieve as Grigor Dimitrov forced to retire when two sets up
Jannik Sinner gets reprieve as Grigor Dimitrov forced to retire when two sets up

BreakingNews.ie

time25 minutes ago

  • BreakingNews.ie

Jannik Sinner gets reprieve as Grigor Dimitrov forced to retire when two sets up

Grigor Dimitrov suffered Wimbledon heartbreak when he was on the verge of knocking out world number one Jannik Sinner. The 34-year-old Bulgarian was two sets up and playing some inspired tennis when, at 2-2 in the third set, he clutched his chest after serving an ace. Advertisement Sinner rushed around the net to check on his opponent as he sat, in some distress, on the court. Jannik Sinner and physios check on Grigor Dimitrov (Jordan Pettitt/PA) The 19th seed was helped to his feet by two physios and went off to receive treatment, before returning a few minutes later to shake Sinner's hand. It was more dreadful luck for a popular player, who had to retire injured from matches in the last four grand slams, including against Daniil Medvedev here at the same stage last year. Sinner, who helped Dimitrov pack his rackets away and carried his bag off court, said: 'I don't know what to say. He is an incredible player, I think we all saw this today. Advertisement 'He's been so unlucky in the past couple of years. An incredible player, a good friend also. Seeing him in this position, if there would be a chance he could play the next round he would deserve it. A sight we never want to see. Grigor Dimitrov is forced to retire while leading two sets to love. Everyone at #Wimbledon is wishing you a speedy recovery, Grigor 💚💜 — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 7, 2025 'I hope he has a speedy recovery. I don't take this as a win at all. This is just a very unfortunate moment to witness for all of us. 'In the last grand slams he struggled a lot. Seeing him again having this kind of injury is very, very tough. It's very sad. We all wish him only the best, let's have applause for him.' It was a major reprieve for Sinner, the three-time grand slam winner who looked set to be on the end of a seismic shock in front of a stunned Centre Court. Advertisement Grigor Dimitrov waves to the crowd after retiring through injury (Jordan Pettitt/PA) Sport Novak Djokovic overcomes historic bad start to rea... Read More The Italian had slipped on the baseline in the opening game and took a medical timeout midway through the second set for treatment on his right wrist and elbow. But the physio was unable to alleviate the real pain for Sinner, which was Dimitrov serving up a grass-court clinic on a surface the 23-year-old has yet to get to grips with. However, after two hours and eight minutes of vintage Dimitrov, his body let him down again, so it is the top seed who will face American Ben Shelton in the quarter-finals.

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