“I wasn’t ready to play”: Rublev explains why he skipped the Olympic Games

Andrey Rublev explained his reasons for skipping the Olympic Games despite being a gold medalist. The 27-year-old Russian experienced a dip in form in the middle of the season after the clay swing, suffering four consecutive first-round losses.

Now, as the US Open Series begins, Rublev is starting to turn his season around in North America. He reached the quarterfinals at the DC Open last week and recently secured his first win at the Masters 1000 Montreal Open by defeating Argentine Tomas Martin Etcheverry.

In May, Rublev claimed his second Masters 1000 title at the Madrid Open and seemed to be one of the favorites for the French Open, though he lost to Matteo Arnaldi. The mid-season slump took him away from his usual consistency in getting deep into tournaments.

For the past four years, he had hardly moved from the top 10, spending much of that time even in the top 5, though the losing streak brought him close to a significant drop: "If Madrid didn't exist, I would be outside the top 15,” he said.

When the time came to decide whether to travel to Paris 2024, Rublev had to make a tough decision with his team: “I didn’t play the Olympic Games because we felt that mentally I wasn’t ready to play,” said the Tokyo 2020 mixed doubles gold medalist to Tennis Channel.

“Because of my recent results and the way I was behaving. So we decided, okay, let’s give priority to my career, singles, we take time off to try and recover me a bit mentally. Then we play some ATP 250s, and then we go earlier to America to prepare to be much more ready for Montreal. And then I won the match, so that’s the most important thing.”

It wasn’t an easy debut against Etcheverry in Montreal. The Russian recovered from a break down to win the match 7-6(3), 6-2, joking that he should have gone to the Olympics if he had lost: “In one moment in my head, when I was losing, I was thinking, I came earlier here to be more prepared because other players are coming from the Olympics.”

“In the end, it doesn’t change anything because they are coming from the Olympics and they are winning, and I am losing. I should have gone to play in the Olympics. That was, in one moment, in my head,” Rublev joked.