I’ve worked hard for this’, says history-making Jabeur

Ons Jabeur’s historic Wimbledon campaign saw her reach the women’s quarterfinals on Monday, beating Poland’s 2020 French Open champion Iga Swiatek 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 in their fourthround match.

The 26-year-old is the first Arab woman to reach the last eight at Wimbledon and will face Belarus second seed Aryna Sabalenka who defeated Elena Rybakina 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

Sabalenka will be playing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinal.

Jabeur celebrated victory with a fist pump and a yell of delight but for once she was not a lone Tunisian voice as some spectators burst out into song.

“Tunisians are everywhere, I got to say,” she said.

“Yeah, they were singing actually a football song. I felt the need to sing with them also.

“I felt so happy that I wanted, like, to hear more. I was doing like this to hear them (cupping a hand to one ear)”

Jabeur’s exploits in the past few weeks have given huge momentum to her mission to encourage more Arab women, especially North African, to take up the sport.

She admitted, though, that to get to where she is now has taken a lot of resilience to overcome setbacks.

“I’ve worked hard to earn my place here,” she said.