It's the dirty little secret of tennis players who compete on the red clay used at the Paris Olympics: Keeping white clothes and footwear clean while running around on what's really dust from crushed red bricks is absolutely impossible. "Shoes and socks are the worst. You have to change a lot," says Elina Svitolina, a bronze medalist for Ukraine at the Tokyo Games. "After the clay-court season, everything goes into the (trash)." Svitolina travels with 40 pairs of socks when the tour takes players through a European clay circuit that generally runs from April through the French Open in June. The Games' tennis competition wraps up Sunday at Roland Garros, reports the AP, the same clay facility that hosts the French Open.
"I used to think it was cool ... I was out there trying to get them extra dirty," Tommy Paul, an American who played in the third round in Paris on Wednesday, says with a laugh. "As long as you're not wiping out in the middle of a match when you're all sweaty—then it's all over you. That sucks." Clay courts—sometimes referred to by players as "the dirt"—can be tricky. The slowness and grit can dull the speediest serves and most powerful groundstrokes. That can create lengthier points and extended matches, upping the stamina needed. But, says two-time Grand Slam semifinalist Maria Sakkari: "It's a lot easier to play on clay than to get your socks washed, that's for sure."
This is not a new phenomenon. Clay has been used since the 1890s at what is now the French Open. Chris Evert, who won seven of her 18 Grand Slam titles in Paris in the 1970s and 1980s, remembers trying to figure out how to look presentable on court. "I probably was the type that brought, like, 14 pair of socks," Evert recalls. "It was a mess." Look closely at a tennis player's uniform after a match on clay, and it will be dotted with flecks of the stuff. "If you fall once, it's over: The clay is everywhere on you," says Marta Kostyuk, a Ukrainian slated to play in Olympic quarterfinals Wednesday. "I find it on my neck, in my hair, places where I was like, 'Whoa, how did it get there?'
(More
2024 Paris Olympics stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
