It was the sort of outcome that Wimbledon had been intent on avoiding at the All England Club: a Belarusian champion holding up the silverware in triumph with the war in Ukraine still a brutal reality.
But Wimbledon, where Belarusian and Russian players were banned in 2022 and may be again this year, has remained an outlier in professional tennis and increasingly in international sports.
Aryna Sabalenka, born and raised to pound tennis balls into submission in Minsk, Belarus, was free to play and win the Australian Open women’s singles title as a neutral competitor, even if there was scant chance her victory would be greeted neutrally at home or by her country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, whom she knows personally.
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