The tennis player has occupied positions that domestic athletes could not get for many decades
Brazilian tennis players Beatrice Haddad Maia he entered the history of Brazilian tennis by beating the Tunisian Ons Jabeur, 2 sets to 1, and reaching the semifinal of Roland Garros.
Maria Esther Bueno was the last Brazilian to reach this milestone at a Grand Slam (one of tennis’ four major annual events), in this case the US Open, in New York, in 1968.
Get to know the trajectory of Beatriz Haddad Maia, or Bia, as she prefers to be called:
Born in São Paulo, Bia started playing at the age of 4 encouraged by her mother. At the age of 10 she was already playing in tournaments and was voted Brazil’s best youth tennis player for four consecutive years, between 2009 and 2012.
The young woman reached her first Grand Slam final, again at Roland-Garros, in the junior category in 2012, playing doubles alongside Paraguayan Montserrat Gonzalez and reaching 15th position in the ITF (International Tennis Federation) rankings.
In 2014, when she turned 18, Bia began pursuing professional tournament play, for both the ITF and the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association).
In 2017, the Brazilian established herself on the WTA professional scene and played in the group stages of some of the world’s major tournaments, including Wimbledon, where she won her first Grand Slam match. At the time, it had been 28 years since a Brazilian had not won the British Grand Slam.
The following year, however, brought a series of bad luck, with injuries in 2018. In the same year, the tennis player moved from Rio de Janeiro to Florianópolis. “It was a decision made more by the person Bia, than by the tennis player Bia. I wanted to have a more peaceful life. I felt that I could no longer think only about my tennis side. I wanted a better quality of life,” he said.
Recovered, in 2019 she became the first Brazilian to win an Australian Open match since 1965.
In a new sequence of falls, in 2019, Bia is suspended for 10 months for doping. The penalty, considered brief, was due to the athlete’s ability to demonstrate that his case was the result of cross-contamination in the handling of vitamins in the pharmacy.
In addition to this, Bia underwent three removals caused by the covid-19 pandemic and surgery to remove a tumor from his left hand in 2020.
Since then, the athlete has campaigned to return to the court and seek sponsorship – and has had positive results, ahead of this year’s Roland Garros highlight.
And two curiosities: the tennis player is the granddaughter of the presenter and musician Roland Boldrin, who presented Brazilian music programs on TV Cultura for decades, such as “Viola Minha Viola” and “Sr. Brasil”, and passed away in November 2022.
Bia also likes to paint pictures with oil paints and shares some of her works on her social networks:
Source: Terra
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