2023-06-05 20:04:09
Born in Moscow, residing in France for six years, the 22-year-old player has just obtained her naturalization. She becomes the 2nd tricolor behind Caroline Garcia.
“I did everything possible on my side. Now I wait.” A few days ago, Russian tennis player Varvara Gracheva told Freed his journey to obtain French nationality, his steps, his patience. The wait ended this Monday, May 5, at the start of the second week of Roland-Garros. “Varvara obtained validation today of his French naturalization”confirms his agent to Release. The 22-year-old player, 41st in the world, is now waiting for a passport in good and due form to align herself with the world tournaments under the French flag. Incidentally, she becomes the French number 2 behind Caroline Garcia.
A significant potential asset for the French team with a view to international meetings, the Billie Jean King Cup (ex-Fed Cup) and especially the Paris 2024 Olympics, where it could apply. Never before Varvara Gracheva had French women’s tennis been faced with such a situation.
Her wish to become French goes back to the time of the Covid and the first confinement. “I had already been in the same training center for three or four years. [à Cannes, ndlr]and it could be a lot to have a stable base»she told Release. The Russian landed on the Côte-d’Azur at the age of 17, to join the Elite Tennis Center, managed by former player Jean-René Lisnard. Previously, the young woman born in Moscow but raised in Zhukovsky, about sixty kilometers southeast of the capital, had been in the United States, Germany and Portugal to progress as a player.
The approach has little to do with the war in Ukraine, according to Gracheva, the conflict having all the same tended to slow down the examination of his file, additional precautions oblige around Russian nationals. A few days after the outbreak of hostilities, another Russian sports figure passed under the French flag. The Franco-Russian Pavel Sivakov, who until then ran for his father’s country of origin, joined in March 2022 the country where he was born, in Haute-Garonne. “I had wanted to become French for some time and I had already applied to the UCI, but given what is happening in Ukraine at the moment, I wanted to speed things up, ”he said. on the website of his Ineos team. Since then, he has been able to put on the blue jersey of the French team at the world championships disputed in Australia in the fall of 2022. Before being recalled for those of Glasgow this summer?
#Russian #Varvara #Gracheva #obtains #French #nationality #Liberation