Sports
Elina Svitolina: Ukraine's unbreakable spirit is a big motivation for me
By now, nearly two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a familiar rhythm to Elina Svitolina’s days.
The missile attacks from Russia generally happen overnight, so in the morning, just after she opens her eyes, she grabs her phone to see where the bombs have fallen. There is a call to her grandmother in Odessa. No matter how many times Svitolina has asked, her grandmother has refused to leave her home and her cat.
There is time with her 15-month-old daughter, Skai. There are many hours of training. There are phone calls related to her own business, and many more related to fundraising and relief efforts for Ukraine, through her work with United24, Ukraine’s main war relief fundraising organization, the one her country’s president called to request her help with. Sometimes these stretch into the night and don’t finish until after she has put Skai to bed and had dinner with her husband, the French tennis player Gael Monfils.
It’s a lot, and yet Svitolina, the comeback player of the year in women’s tennis in 2023, insists she is lucky. She has her parents and her in-laws helping with Skai, and many others helping with the relief efforts and her other pursuits. And then there are all the soldiers, people she grew up with, doing the really hard work.
“I have a lot of friends, male friends, and they’re all at the front line,” the 29-year-old Svitolina says during a video interview from Monaco, where she was getting ready for the 2024 season.
There are tennis players who won more matches and earned more money in 2023 than Svitolina, and players who achieved more acclaim. But it’s hard to imagine a player having a more shocking and impactful year, a stunning ride from the minor leagues back to Centre Court at Wimbledon during which both tennis fans and those who paid little attention to the sport blanketed her with unique and unbridled adulation.
Svitolina was hugely popular at Wimbledon (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Were the roars for Carlos Alcaraz, the men’s Wimbledon champion, as loud as those for Svitolina during her run to the semi-finals at the All England Club, or to the quarter-finals of the French Open at Roland Garros weeks earlier? Definitely not.
Here was a different Svitolina, maybe even a better one than the Svitolina who rose to No 3 in the world in 2017 and won the WTA Tour finals the next year. That Svitolina didn’t have the steeliness, or the drive, or the purpose of this one, because during those few days last July, when Svitolina was the biggest story in the sport, or maybe in any sport, there was a new surety to those forehands and backhands she lasered down the lines in the tightest moments against the Grand Slam champions Victoria Azarenka and Iga Swiatek, the world No 1. There was a kind of serenity about her as she floated from one match and moment to the next.
“This whole motivation around me, with different kinds of projects with my foundation, with United24, with all the people behind me, I got enormous support from Ukrainians, but also around the world and it really motivated me to go for more, to really push myself,” she says. “I found myself in the quarter-final of Roland Garros, then in the semi-final of Wimbledon, playing great tennis and being super motivated and with a fresh mind and fresh energy.”
No one saw this coming. Here was a player coming back from giving birth, with so much of her attention focused on motherhood and on the trauma that her family and country were enduring. No one in the sport envisioned Svitolina shooting up the rankings so quickly, if ever.
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Well, actually, that’s not completely true.
Last January, three months after Skai was born, Svitolina reached out to Raemon Sluiter, a well-regarded Dutch tennis coach, to see if he would consider taking her on. Where others might have seen the challenges of a postpartum comeback, Sluiter saw an opportunity. There was no question about Svitolina’s raw talent. No one rises to No 3 in the world and wins the season-ending championship by accident. But there was another dynamic at play that made working with Svitolina so enticing for Sluiter.
With the tennis off-season so brief, players rarely get a chunk of time to really train and practise, to consider making changes to how they play.
“If you really want to change something, you have to cut your season short,” Sluiter said during a recent interview.
At the time of the initial call, Svitolina did not plan on returning to competition for another three months. Sluiter saw this as a golden chance for her to evolve. He told her not to worry about her busy life off the court. All she needed, he said, was to be dedicated and focused on tennis when she was training.
“I would take 30 minutes of quality training over two hours of just going through the motions,” Sluiter said. “It’s about being intentional and very present.”
If Svitolina was tired, or feeling overwhelmed, he told her to take the day off. Given everything else going on in Svitolina’s life, Sluiter knew this was a player and a person unlike any other.
Flash forward a few more months. It’s October and Svitolina’s 2023 tennis ride has come to an end. The pain from a stress fracture in her ankle, which began during the French Open, intensified during Wimbledon and became debilitating during the North American hardcourt swing, forced her to end her season after the U.S. Open.
Svitolina celebrates winning match point against Darya Kasatkina at Roland Garros (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
This is when Svitolina told Monfils she wanted to visit Ukraine. Understandably protective, her husband was scared and wary. “Even though it’s my homeland, it’s still tough for him to realize that I want to go back, I want to go to the country where the war is,” she says.
Monfils ultimately understood and, in November, Svitolina took the arduous trip involving the 10-hour train rides to Ukraine for 10 days, first to see her grandmother in Odessa, then to Kyiv and Dnipro, where she met with government officials and caught up with old friends, then to Kharkiv, which is just 20km (around 12 miles) from the Russian border.
Svitolina moved there when she was 12 to train and pursue her career as a pro tennis player. She went to see her old coaches and the club where she played her first tournaments and to be with the kids who are training there now and continuing with their lives amid the war.
“It’s such a big motivation for me to see that in Ukraine life continues; they are having this unbreakable spirit that nothing can really bother them, nothing can break their spirit,” she said.
“This is really a huge motivation for me when I am playing a tough match. When I’m facing tough moments in my life, I always remind myself of the people that have to deal with war, that have to deal with the loss of their homes and, you know, just trying to really survive, to live a normal life. And of course, the soldiers, the men and women who are defending our country, who took the weapons in their hands.”
After she returned home, and as her ankle healed, Svitolina got back to work. Once more, Sluiter saw the injury as something of an opportunity, giving Svitolina an extended off-season to refine and develop her game without the pressure to return to competition.
Sluiter didn’t prescribe anything radical, rather, merely doing what she began to do last year to an even greater degree.
“She can approach matches with a more aggressive mindset and try to control matches more and play them more on her terms than on the opponent’s terms,” he said.
Monfils and Svitolina are married (Pascal Le Segretain/SC Pool – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
By mid-December, Svitolina was able to play “90 per cent pain-free”, though she remained concerned about how her ankle would feel on the hard courts of Auckland’s ASB Classic, her main tuneup before the Australian Open, and how sharp she might be. Coming back from childbirth, she largely struggled to win during the first six weeks. She found her form in late May in Strasbourg, the week before the French Open.
So far, so good.
With Skai in tow for her first big tennis road trip, Svitolina won her first four matches in Auckland, two against former Grand Slam champions, Carolina Wozniacki and Emma Raducanu, before losing a tight final to Coco Gauff, winner of the most recent Grand Slam event, who won 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-3.
“I’m playing more freely,” Svitolina said last month. “Before, I was a tennis player from Ukraine. But right now, it’s very different. Different motivation, different goals. And for me, it’s important every single day to take the opportunity, to give 100 per cent on each practice, each match, and do everything that is in my power.”
(Top photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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