Today's edition of Girl Power features both ladies that were the main athletes in my first two blogs on this website. Yesterday was all about Jennifer Brady and her win against Jelena Ostapenko in her tennis match at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Tournament. Today she would face Caroline Garcia, an even higher ranked player whom she already beat a couple of weeks ago. The question was whether she would be able to do it again, or not. I'll keep it short, but the answer was "Yes". Jennifer Brady was able to defeat Garcia in two straight sets. Not the easiest of sets, but still enough to show that she's certainly on the right track.
Mikaela Shiffrin was the first athlete featured in my blogs a week and a half ago. I wrote about her first gold medal at the 2019 World Ski Championships. Later she would add a second one, and she also won a bronze medal during those championships. Shiffrin is currently still in Sweden where the world championships were held, but she is now in the capital city Stockholm. Stockholm was the venue of a City World Cup event today. This is basically a slalom, but on a shorter track in the middle of a city. Well, Shiffrin is a gold digger and of course, the gold medal was hers again today. Christina Geiger won the silver medal and the bronze was for Anna Swenn-Larsson on her home soil.
But... who is the lady of the day? It's Kristina Mladenovic...
Kristina Mladenovic did not only play the top seed of the tennis tournament in Dubai, she also played the current world number one, Naomi Osaka. Until today Osaka had played ten matches in 2019, she won nine of these, only losing to Lesia Tsurenko in the semi final of the Brisbane Open in January. The remaining seven matches she won during the Australian Open, including the win in three sets over Petra Kvitova in the final. Osaka took a break after the Australian Open and didn't play any competitive matches until she faced Mladenovic today.
Mladenovic is the former number 10 of the world, but currently finds herself in 67th place. Still well within the top 100, but far away from the best form of her career just a couple of years ago. Also her recent form gave no indication that I would be writing about her today, but that at the same time is the charm of this kind of blog. Whoever I'm going to talk about depends solely on the performances of the athletes themselves. So far Mladenovic only played four matches in 2019, and she lost all four of them. Destanee Aiava was too strong for her in Brisbane, Kimberly Birrell won against Mladenovic during the qualification tournament of Sydney, whereas Donna Vekic won easily against her in the first round of the Australian Open. In St. Petersburg it was Jelena Ostapenko that won against Mladenovic in the first round. Basically, chances were very small that Mladenovic was going to upset Naomi Osaka today.
The only positive feeling that recently happened and that could put her into a situation that she could pull of something like she did today was that she reached the final of the Australian Open, but in doubles together with Timea Babos. Mladenovic and Babos know each other from when they were children. Other than that Mladenovic has been working on her service. The fact that she lost these matches early on this year might have been partially caused by the adaption of the service. She probably was still getting used to the new swing she's been trying to make her own. Today against Osaka the service was the key factor of the great result. She produced not a single double fault, but did manage to hit four aces throughout the match. Still, it wasn't the only factor that influenced the match. After all, she lost her own service four times throughout the match. Four breaks against you normally puts you in a tough task to win the match, but Mladenovic played outstanding when Osaka was to serve. Osaka only managed two win two of the nine games she started serving, which resulted in a simple, and unexpected 6-3, 6-3 win for Mladenovic.
More tennis...
Tennis is the main sport throughout the week for women's sports. This will most likely be the case also in the future. I don't mind that, as I really like to follow women's tennis, as you may have already noticed from my blogs so far.
Today there were wins for Iga Swiatek, Kateryna Kozlova, Tereza Smitkova, Sorana Cirstea, Anna Blinkova and Evgeniya Rodina in the tournament in Budapest. Kozlova won in a very easy match (6-1, 6-1) against Johanna Larsson. Most of the other matches were only decided after three sets.
In Dubai, Simona Halep won in two sets against Genie Bouchard. Also Belinda Bencic, Garbine Muguruza, Petra Kvitova, Karolina Pliskova and Angelique Kerber did the same. Besides Osaka's loss, only the defeat of Kiki Bertens against Viktoria Kuzmova really stood out. Bertens won the second set, but lost 6-2 in the first and 7-6 after a tie-break in the deciding third set.
Elsewhere...
Besides Mikaela Shiffrin's win in Stockholm, there were a few more skiing races today. At the FIS Junior World Ski Championships the action was on the Giant Slalom today. The winner was Alice Robinson from New Zealand. She won ahead of Camille Rast and Kaja Norbye. The slalom race for the FIS rankings in Arvidsjaur was won Moa Ögren, whereas Hannah Köck also won a slalom race, in Lech, Austria.
Like yesterday, also today there were some Asian Women's Twenty20 Internationals being played. China won by one wicket against Hong Kong. Nepal managed to score 34 runs more than their opponents Malaysia, whereas the United Arab Emirates where the better half over Kuwait by 86 runs.
Finally, there was some women's Champions Leaugue Volleyball tonight. When you were all watching boring 0-0 draws in the men's football Champions League, volleyball clubs from Russia, Italy and Germany managed to win their group stage matches.
In Finland, Hämeenlinna HPK wasn't able to challenge Dinamo Kazan. The Russians had an easy match and won 0-3 in sets, (19-25,18-25,19-25). A similar match happened in Poland, where home team Budowlani Lódz did not stand a single chance against Novara Trecate from Italy. The sets standings show the massive difference here, (19-25,16-25,11-25). The only winning team that played at home was Schweriner SC. They played against another Polish team LKS Lódz. In an exciting first set the visitors took a 0-1 lead, finishing the set with a 25-23 score. Schweringer SC recovered from that and won the second set 25-21. This gave them the confidence to overcome the Polish team in the remainder of the match, 25-18 and 25-17 in sets three and four.
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