Thanks in no small part to victory in the US Open in Flushing Meadows, New York City, teenage tennis player Emma Raducanu was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2021. Raducanu, then 18, beat diver Tom Daley and swimmer Adama Peaty to the title, with footballer Raheem Sterling, boxer Tyson fury and paralympian Sarah Storey also shorlisted for the main award. Canadian-born Raducana became the first woman to win the award since Zara Tindall, née Phillips, in 2006 and the first tennis player to do so since Sir Andy Murray in 2016.
Despite playing in just the second Grand Slam event of her career, Emma Raducanu did not drop a set at Flushing Meadows, including during her three qualification matches, and eventually beat fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-3 in the final. In so doing, she became the first qualifier, male or female, to win a Grand Slam title in the Open Era (which officially began in 1968), the youngest Briton to win a Grand Slam title and the first British woman to win a Grand Slam singles title since Virginia Wade won at Wimbledon in 1977.
Speaking of Wimbledon, Raducanu was handed a wildcard into the 2021 Championships and enjoyed a dream debut in SW19, winning her first three matches in straight sets. In her fourth-round match against Ajla Tomljanović, she trailed 4-6, 0-3 before being forced to retire because of “difficulty breathing”. Nevertheless, Raducanu still became the youngest woman to reach the last 16 at Wimbledon during the Open Era.
Her performance was all the more remarkable for the fact that until Wimbledon she had not won a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour match. Indeed, she did not make her main draw debut until early June, again after receiving a wildcard, in the Nottingham Open, where she lost 6-3, 6-4 to Harriet Dart in the first round. In her acceptance speech for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, Radacanu said, “Thanks to all the fans and voters, this year has been insane. The energy this year playing at Wimbledon in front of my home crowd, that was something I’ve never felt before.”