“There’s something about playing dopers in Madrid,” Eugenie Bouchard tweeted following her Wednesday’s win over Dayana Yastremska at the Mutua Madrid Open, which came six years after she defeated Maria Sharapova on the same stage. The Canadian then put back her words as she “did not mean to cause harm.”
In the first round of the 2023 Mutua Madrid Open, Bouchard recorded a 6-7(6) 6-2 6-2 victory over Yastremska. The Ukrainian was provisionally suspended in January 2021 due to testing positive for mesterolone metabolite, however, in June that same year she was found not guilty and could resume her career immediately.
In 2017, Bouchard defeated Sharapova 7-5 2-6 6-4 in the second round of the WTA 1000 tournament in Madrid, as the Russian was playing just her second event after returning from a 15-month doping ban.
As this week’s win over Yastremska was Bouchard’s first main-draw win at the Madrid Open since 2017, she made an analogy about beating dopers in the Spanish capital, but she later deleted the insulting tweet and apologized:
I want to apologize for my tweet yesterday. It was a lapse in judgment, and unnecessary. Though I’ve always championed…
