The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
MY ADVICE TO EMMA RADUCANU? IGNORE MOST OF THE ADVICE
KIRSTY STRICKLAND:
Emma Raducanu’s journey to US Open victory reads like a movie script. It’s impossible to overstate the level of talent and mental fortitude required to do what she did in New York on Saturday.
Aged just 18, she is the first British woman to win a grand slam since 1977.
The sheer scale of her triumph is enough to make your head spin.
At 18, I was proficient in nothing more spectacular than drinking games and angsty Facebook updates.
But then, as we’ve heard so often over the last few days, Emma Raducanu is not like the rest of us.
Through her hard work and dazzling talent, she has been elevated to superstar status.
Her meteoric rise to the top has secured her place in the history books. And everybody is excited to see what she does next.
I’m sure that The Courier is the paper of choice for all newly minted megastars. So I’d like to take this opportunity to offer Emma some advice.
Ignore most of the advice that comes your way.
Only take advice from people you would phone for help in a crisis.
That goes for criticism too. If they’re not the person who you’d ask to hold the ladder as you break into your own house after losing your keys, their opinion of you doesn’t matter.
Alongside her intensive training to becoming a world-class athlete, Emma aced her A-Levels.
She’s clearly a very intelligent young woman.
Which means there’s no way she’d trust Piers Morgan to hold the ladder.
Earlier this year, when Emma Raducanu had to pull out of Wimbledon for medical reasons, Mr Morgan was in such a rush to offer his insight into what really happened that he didn’t have time to spell her name correctly.
He tweeted: “Ms Raducuna’s a talented player but couldn’t handle the pressure & quit when she was losing badly. Not ‘brave’, just a shame.’’
It was a shame.
A shame that Piers had nothing better to do than criticise a talented young woman for what he perceived as weakness.
Piers Morgan’s opinion of Emma Raducanu didn’t matter then and it doesn’t matter now.
Although it has been interesting to watch him try to claim Emma’s success for his own since her US Open win.
As though being uppity with a teenager on Twitter is what counts as an inspirational pep talk these days.
He has form for this.
Since he threw a massive tantrum and stormed off the Good Morning Britain set, he’s set up a new side-hustle as a guru.
He tweets out unasked-for advice to famous young women who have much better things to do with their time than read the latest musings of a failed TV presenter.
When it comes to everybody’s new favourite sporting hero, Piers Morgan won’t be the only one offering unsolicited advice about how she should approach her new-found fame and riches.
The UK doesn’t have a great track record in how it treats those women who capture the public’s imagination in the way that Emma Raducanu has.
We build them up and tear them down. Or we tell them how great they are and then criticise them if they show too much self-confidence.
We want them to be “normal” but not too
We could root for her while giving her space to make mistakes
normal; polished, but not perfect; accessible but not fame-hungry.
We want them to be grateful, humble and uncomplaining.
It’s an impossible line to toe, which is why so many young women find themselves on the wrong side of it.
Emma Raducanu’s beaming smile was on the front pages of most of the papers yesterday.
Inside, pages were dedicated to her achievements and background. Alongside this, there were some signs of what is to come.
One headline read: “Grace, good looks (and fluent Mandarin) will net a fortune”.
Another: “Raducanu slips into her little black dress and a whole new life’’.
For the UK media, faced with an attractive young woman who has become an overnight global superstar, this is what restraint looks like.
It’s the neat handwriting you do on the first page of a shiny new notebook.
A few pages in, you switch back into your usual scrawl.
And I fear that’s what the media has in store for Emma Raducanu.
Imagine if we could root for her success while giving her space to make mistakes.
If newspapers focused solely on her remarkable sporting prowess and left her appearance and clothes unremarked upon.
We all want Emma to go on to achieve all that she has shown herself capable of achieving.
That she is destined for further greatness seems inevitable.
But the media frenzy that chews young women up and spits them out shouldn’t be.