Leading injury prevention and athlete welfare expert Stephen Smith has spoken to Tennis365 about Emma Raducanu’s struggles with injuries and revealed the role that the Brit’s stunning US Open win has played.
Raducanu has battled a host of problems with her body in her young career to date, including in her last match, where she was forced to retire against Camila Osorio at the Qatar Open.
The world No 25 cut short her 2025 season in mid-October having struggled with physical issues at tournaments in Wuhan and Ningbo.
The 23-year-old’s preparations for the 2026 campaign were hampered by a bone injury in her foot that restricted her ability to train.
In May 2023, Raducanu underwent surgeries on both her wrists and her ankle, which ruled her out for the remainder of the season.
Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Kitman Labs — the world’s leading sports science and performance intelligence company — addressed whether Raducanu could do anything differently to prevent injuries.
“It’s hard when a young athlete like that is coming through and having such great success on the court,” Smith said.
“I think the lessons we can take from other sports, and apply them back to a young athlete like that that’s emerging, is all about periodisation.
“That’s one of the challenges that we’re now seeing with the global calendar within tennis, is the requirements in terms of the number of tournaments that they need to be involved in, it makes that even harder.
“So I think for her, what she’d like to be able to do is cherry pick the ones that are more important throughout the year and keep building in blocks of development work to ensure that she has that base, and she’s getting enough recovery to be able to adapt to the demands of a formalised professional career. And a formalised professional career where you’re expected to get success, you’re expected to make it to finals, you’re expected to pick up trophies.
“So I think it’s all about periodisation, it’s all about planning and being smart and being really strategic, but I think building in blocks, not just of recovery and rest, but of development work so she can actually top up some of those underlying foundational fitness and strength capabilities.
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“I think they’re really, really important in emerging athletes of her age and expectation. Because what she doesn’t want to do is to cut her career short by picking up really significant injuries this early, especially when she looks like she has the quality that she has.”
Raducanu secured the only title of her career to date in remarkable fashion as she won the 2021 US Open as an 18-year-old ranked 150th in the world. She remains the only player in tennis history to win a Grand Slam title as a qualifier.
Smith assessed that Raducanu’s body was not ready for the big step-up in intensity and level of competition that came with playing on the WTA Tour regularly after her US Open win.
“Undoubtedly, she wasn’t ready for that,” he said.
“That’s exactly why I’m suggesting that her periodisation and planning model for this season is going to be a cumulative build from where she was at, and she needs to get the right balance between enough exposure to be able to compete at that level and also enough time to be able to recover, regenerate, look after her body and keep building it back up.
“It takes a number of seasons — what we see in any sport globally, for young emerging athletes who go from a limited or lower intensity competition base — it takes multiple years to be able to build those foundations. I just think she needs to be incredibly smart, and she’s such a promising athlete that you hope she gets that right.”
Asked if Raducanu is still some way off reaching her physical prime, Smith replied: “100%, I think she most likely is still a distance from her physical prime.”
Following her second round exit at the Australian Open, Raducanu parted ways with her former coach Francisco Roig, and she has now worked with eight different permanent coaches during her professional career.
Smith gave his verdict on whether Raducanu’s frequent coaching changes could be a contributing factor in her injuries, given the potential adjustments to training methods with each change.
“If there was [a change of methods with each coaching change], we can only hypothesise that there was,” Smith assessed.
“It’s hard from the outside looking in to be able to say, yes, there’s been a change, but certainly if there were changes with technique, changes with training load, changes with the way they’re coaching and playing et cetera, with each of those coaching changes, that’s another risk factor, for sure.”
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