Merely a few weeks after the French Open 2024 concludes, Paris will be treated to yet another glamorous sporting event – the Olympics. To get fans excited for the upcoming Olympic Games, Tennis Channel asked players on the ATP and WTA Tours to identify which of their fellow competitors would be good at sports outside of tennis. During this fun session, Coco Gauff and Ons Jabeur displayed faith in each other’s fencing skills.
Popular players participating in the Roland Garros were asked to list their peers who would hypothetically win gold medals in sporting activities such as pole vault, fencing, boxing, table tennis, and gymnastics. Two of the most entertaining players from the WTA Tour – Coco Gauff and Ons Jabeur – were each other’s choices when asked about fencing. Seems amazing how both picked each other unintentionally.
Coco Gauff: “Who has like good hands? Probably like Ons Jabeur.”
Ons Jabeur: “I’ll take Coco Gauff.”
Ons Jabeur is an interesting pick from Coco Gauff because the Tunisian player’s husband and trainer, Karim Kamoun was a professional fencer himself. It was talked about a lot in a People’s Magazine interview in 2021.
But it seems that the overwhelming favorite on the WTA Tour when it comes to excelling in other sports, is Coco Gauff. Players such as Jelena Ostapenko and Caroline Garcia recognized Gauff for her athleticism, picking the American to win gold in gymnastics too.
Gauff hilariously also lauded her own sporting abilities by backing herself to win gold in boxing and gymnastics for the United States, hypothetically.
“I’ve taking some boxing classes, so I will take myself.”
“I’m gonna go with myself (for gymnastics). Fun fact, I can actually walk on my hands across a tennis court. So, I’ll pick myself,” Gauff said.
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Coco Gauff is so sure about herself because she has incorporated other sports into her fitness routine. The youngster is one of the most naturally gifted athletes in the tennis world. As seen on the court, the American is extremely strong, agile, fast, and flexible. A lot of that goes to coach Brad Gilbert and his team.
Coco Gauff Made to Work Hard by Brad Gilbert and Team
Before the start of every tennis season, the Florida native finds herself in the boxing ring and the swimming pool to work on her stamina and strength. Coco Gauff had written about the same once in a BBC column.
“My fitness coach Stephane is trying to find extra ways to get me tired and do extra cardio because my heart rate doesn’t stay high for long. Hopefully I will be in the game for another 20 years and so you have to make it fun and change it up.
“As well as boxing, I did some swimming. For me, swimming is one of those things which gets me the most tired. I can run forever and do a lot of things forever, but swimming I feel like I’m done after two laps.”
The Tennis Channel segment above showcased not just her popularity in the tennis world, but her image of being one of the fittest, if not the fittest player in women’s tennis at the moment. It is no co-incidence that her head coach Brad Gilbert and his team have focused on making her training and drills effective and enjoyable.
Brad Gilbert is one coach who is famously known for his ‘Winning Ugly’ mentality for his pupils, which means that they need to scrap hard not only during their matches but also put that 1% extra every time in training.
Gilbert has the reputation of a taskmaster and that was evident when he made a celebrity actress like Zendaya do a ‘tennis bootcamp’ to prepare for her role in the 2024 release, Challengers. He spoke about this at length in an interview with the ATP Tour last year.
So it is safe to say that Coco Gauff is being made to work the hardest and that might seem to pay dividends at the French Open. Gauff is through to the quarterfinals after defeating Elisabetta Cocciaretto in the Round of 16. The US Open 2023 champion is in prime form, having not dropped a single set at the French Open so far.
