French Open: Elena Rybakina pulls out due to illness

PARIS: Elena Rybakina, battling a bad case of viral flu, withdrew from Roland Garros. The reigning Wimbledon champion, seeded fourth here, announced her decision not to take the court for her third-round match against Spain's Sara Sorribes Tormo at a press conference just before the scheduled start of play.

Rybakina told reporters that her struggle began following her second round match. The Kazakh player couldn't take more than 10 minutes on the court when warming up on Saturday.

"I was not feeling good already yesterday and the day before, so I didn't sleep two nights and had some fever," she said. "I tried to warm up, but I feel that the right decision is to withdraw."

"I saw the doctor and they said there's a virus doing the rounds here in Paris. With my allergy, immune system went down and I picked up something. I had fever, headache. It's difficult to run and even breathe," she said.