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Tennis News –
Thursday's play at the Mutua Madrid Open came to an unexpected halt after a massive power outage swept across parts of Europe, affecting Spain, Portugal, France, and Andorra. Only a handful of early matches were completed before organizers were forced to cancel the rest of the day’s schedule due to the blackout.“The atmosphere was actually fun”: Elina Svitolina and Marta Kostyuk share their experience during blackout at Madrid Open We reached out to Elina Svitolina and Marta Kostyuk to find out how they experienced this unusual situation. Svitolina, who was scheduled to play the final match of the evening session, admitted she was completely unaware of what was happening at the venue. “Honestly, I just went to bed at the hotel,” she said. “I have no idea what was going on at the tournament site.” Kostyuk, on the other hand, had just finished her warm-up when the lights went out. Her match was expected to start in about 90 minutes to two hours. “To be honest, it was kind of a funny situation,” Marta recalled. “There are a lot of different rooms here, and I went to the area with our locker rooms. When I got there, the screens were off and the lights were out. I thought, ‘Why did they turn everything off?’ I tried to check the scores — but there was no signal. Then finally, the scoreboard loaded and I saw that the matches had been interrupted. I couldn’t understand anything at first because just moments earlier, everything had seemed normal. But when I entered another building and saw complete darkness, that’s when I realized there was a power outage.” Despite the disruption, Kostyuk noted that the mood among the players remained relaxed: “The atmosphere was actually fun. We sat in the restaurant by candlelight — it was really romantic. Then we went to the gym and just lay down and relaxed. It’s a strange feeling — you’re lying there thinking the lights could come back on at any second.”  Tournament organizers postponed the start of matches multiple times before officially calling off the day’s play several hours later. “No one from the tournament explained anything to us, and as far as I understand, they didn’t really have much information either,” said Kostyuk. “This wasn’t just about the courts — the outage affected the entire area. In my opinion, tennis definitely wasn’t the top priority when it came to restoring the power.” “To be honest, I had a really intense day yesterday, so I’m actually glad I got some extra rest,” she added with a laugh. “Now I’ll be ready to play with fresh energy. Well… if the lights are back on!” Due to internet outages in Spain, the players’ comments only reached us later in the evening, once electricity had started to return across Madrid. As of now, organizers plan to resume play on all courts at Caja Magica, with matches starting one hour later than usual — at 1:00 PM Kyiv time. |
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