Was Wimbledon girl ‘poisoned’ by Uzbekistan rats?
WHEN Wimbledon starlet Gabriella Taylor was struck down by a mystery illness and left close to death, it sparked a police investigation amid claims that she could have been poisoned by a jealous rival.
But last night another, more prosaic explanation was being put forward, after it emerged that the British teenager had spent weeks in countries prone to flooding – and diseases spread by rats.
Miss Taylor, 18, had played in a tournament in Uzbekistan – where torrential rains recently flooded streets – shortly before heading to Wimbledon, where she was competing in the girls’ tournament.
And her Twitter page reveals that while in Uzbekistan she came in close contact with aviaries filled with exotic birds.
She was eventually diagnosed with a rare strain of leptospirosis. It typically has an incubation period of seven to ten days, but it can extend to almost a month in some cases.
Miss Taylor, from Southampton, left Uzbekistan and returned to Britain by June 4, so she could have been showing the first symptoms of the illness by the time she played her first Wimbledon match on July 3.
Bacteriology expert Hugh Pennington said leptospirosis was usually transmitted in rat urine – and Miss Taylor’s exposure to flooded areas could ‘significantly increase’ her chances of contracting the flu-like illness, which can be fatal. Professor Pennington, of the University of Aberdeen, added: ‘She wouldn’t have to swallow contaminated water to catch the disease. A drop of infected water on the skin could well be enough.’
The explanation will have gone some way to reassure her worried mother Milena, who said at the height of the scare: ‘The bacteria the infection team found is so rare in Britain that we feel this could not have been an accident.’
The teenager, whose training base is in flood-prone Marbella in Spain, was competing for the junior title. She admitted feeling ill when she defeated No2 seed Rebeka Masarova on July 6 in the round of 16.
Miss Taylor, who is now recovering, may even have inadvertently passed the infection to American player Kayla Day before retiring midway through their quarter-final clash due to illness.
The 16-year-old American said: ‘I was sick after I got home to California, and had really bad flu and what I thought was a stomach virus. I had to withdraw from two tournaments.’
Kayla’s mother, Dana, 51 said: ‘She was ill after Wimbledon, and maybe it was the same bacterial infection that hit Gabriella. Gabriella was ill even before she played Kayla, in her previous match when she beat Masarova. Kayla felt bad playing her knowing that Gabriella was ill, but what could she do?
‘But Kayla didn’t complain that she was poisoned. She lost in the semi-finals. You move on. You don’t complain and blame others.’