Category: 6. Sports

Wimbledon 2025 – Novak Djokovic reaches round four in style in pursuit of 25^th major

At his 20^th Championships appearance and 20 years after his debut, Djokovic has reached the magic century of victories and now holds a 100-12 record at SW19.

He is just the third singles player in tennis history to achieve the feat, joining 20-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer and 18-time major winner Martina Navratilova.

“I did enjoy myself, except maybe the last couple of games,” Djokovic said on court post-match. “Tennis has made me who I am, I try not to take anything for granted, particularly at this age, still going strong…I feel blessed.”

It was plain sailing for the world number six, who registered his first bagel (a 6-0 scoreline) of the Grand Slam season and sealed the win in an hour and 47 minutes.

But if Djokovic had to be summed up in one point, refer to the moment when he was at deuce at 4-3 up in the first set. A diving backhand winner after angled dropshots and a tweener from Kecmanović brought Centre Court to its feet in pure awe.

Harry Sweeny joined our team in 2024 and quickly became a key rider for us in the classics and grand tours. This is the Australian’s fifth season as a pro.

Harry is still discovering his limits as a racer. As a U23, he won Il Piccolo Lombardia and has since ridden the Tour de France, where, as a rookie, he finished third on a stage and rode onto the Champs-Élysées in the break, as jets trailed bleu, blanc, et rouge streaks into the sky overhead. He has raced Paris-Roubaix in the wet and Liège-Bastogne-Liège alongside his friend, the former winner and cycling legend, Philippe Gilbert. Last year, he finished seventh on GC at the Tour of Luxembourg after riding hard for his teammates all season. Harry believes that his best is yet to come.

He came to cycling late. As a kid growing up in Brisbane, where his family moved when he was a child, he played soccer and rugby and did gymnastics and swam. He took up triathlon as a schoolboy, but focused on cycling when he was a junior and was recovering from a running injury. He started out racing local crits. His athleticism soon shone and he was picked to race the world championships in Richmond, Virginia for the Australian national team.

He moved to Europe to race, first for a small junior team in Belgium, and then for two years with the Australian Institute of Sport squad, which was then based in Italy, before moving back to Belgium for his final year as an U23. Those years opened up new worlds for Harry.

EF Education-EasyPost’s open-minded international character is a big draw for him. On the teams he has raced for in the past, he has often been one of the few foreigners. Our team is made up of riders and staff from dozens of nationalities. Most of them know what it is like to build a life far from home and can help with all of the little difficulties that come with that. Our multicultural make up helps us to expand our outlook and think beyond traditional ways of doing things too.

Harry is a lot more than a bike racer. He is a keen cook and he loves to go camping and hiking with his girlfriend, an environmental scientist, near their adopted home in Andorra. In the winter, he loves to ski. And he is a YouTuber.

This summer, Harry will return to the Tour de France in EF Education-EasyPost pink. We know that we can always count on him to be where we need him to be when it counts – and to bring a laugh to the bus.

Novak Djokovic defeated Miomir Kecmanović 6-3, 6-0, 6-4 on Saturday for his 100th career Wimbledon victory.

The 38-year-old Djokovic, who has dropped the past two Wimbledon finals to Carlos Alcaraz, now has a career singles record of 100-12 at the All-England Club. He joins nine-time winner Martina Navratilova and eight-time champion Roger Federer as the only players to have reached the century mark in victories at Wimbledon.

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Djokovic, a seven-time Wimbledon men’s singles winner, will make his seventh straight appearance in the fourth round when he faces Australia’s Alex de Minaur on Sunday.

The French Open is the only other Grand Slam tournament Djokovic has surpassed 100 career singles wins (101). He has won least 90 matches at the Australian Open (99) and U.S. Open (90).

On Thursday, Djokovic moved past Federer by reaching the third round of Wimbledon for the 19th time in his career, the most by a male player in the Open Era.

Djokovic is seeking his 25th career singles major title and first since the 2023 U.S. Open when he beat Daniil Medvedev to tie Margaret Court for most Grand Slam singles championships with 24.

The Boks scored six tries to three but couldn’t build on a 28-3 halftime lead and the Springbok coach didn’t hide his disappointment with the performance.

“I guess it’s a positive that we scored six tries but we’re frustrated,” the Springbok coach said. “I didn’t pick up in the week that this was the way we were going to perform but it’s all fixable – but it’s definitely frustrating.”

Erasmus said he would reconsider his selection because of the performance and to handle the challenge posed by a young and hungry Azzurri.

“Internally we’ve announced that 13, 14 players that will definitely get a run next week, and that we’d build the bench or starting line-up around those guys,” he said.

“We won’t discard those guys but some of them might move to the bench, some of the real standout players who played today might start again.

“The make-up of the team may change to handle the physicality that Italy threw at us. You’d think a team that made 120 tackles in the first half would break in the second half.

“But it’s a team that’s fit and passionate and we have to make sure that the team that we put out next week is not just a team that can go 50 or 60 minutes it must be a team that can go 80 minutes.”

The Boks looked like they might have broken Italy’s resistance with their fifth try at the start of the second half. But the visitors finished the more strongly.

“It was a very frustrating game,” said Erasmus. “We knew they would man up, and they certainly manned up in most departments; scrums, mauling, defence, attack – it was a proper Test match.

“When we were 28-3 up and we scored that try was disallowed for obstruction, I thought we might have them, but then we lost some momentum.

“I don’t think we have too many excuses and it certainly makes the selection for next week interesting – they could easily have come back into it at the end. They performed really well – we definitely tried to impose our game on them, and they didn’t allow it.

“The frustration was not only about not dominating, but also that the game was stop-start, stop-start. It felt like we didn’t get any intensity in the second half.

“The positives are that we won; that we scored tricks even with a maul that didn’t function, even with a breakdown that wasn’t great on attack, even with a counterattack that wasn’t awesome, we still scored six tries.”

Erasmus said the selectors would have to do some hard thinking before naming the second Test team: “We have to pick nine guys to go with the others and we have to decide whether they start or come off the bench. Damian De Allende has a bit of a hamstring but luckily, we don’t have any injuries, just a few bruised egos.”

At least one positive consequence from Iga Swiatek’s relatively poor clay court run has been the added benefit of time. Instead of arriving for the grass court season exhausted from her efforts, for once she had additional time to train, work and adapt her game to the one surface she has yet to conquer.

Swiatek’s growing comfort at Wimbledon was reflected in her most efficient performance of the tournament so far as she dismantled the eternally dangerous Danielle Collins 6-2, 6-3 to return to the fourth round.

Swiatek, who continues to build her profile as a title contender at the All England Club, will next face the 23rd seed Clara Tauson of Denmark. Tauson upset the 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, the 11th seed, 7-6 (6), 6-3 to reach the fourth round.

“I was just in the zone,” said Swiatek. “I knew what I wanted to play and I knew I needed to be brave and just let my hand do the job. Play fast and grab it from the beginning. You can’t let Danielle play her winners. I’m really happy with the performance because there were no ups and downs, it was pretty consistent and it was a good match.”

After winning five grand slam titles, establishing herself as the most successful player of her generation and spending most of the past few years as the world No 1, the No 8 seeding next to Swiatek’s name, which is reflective of her difficulties over the past year, looks very strange.

The 24-year-old has still not won a title at any level since the 2024 French Open last June and she has been open about how her perfectionism, one of her biggest strengths, has been her biggest weakness in recent months, often leading to her becoming overwhelmed by her negative thoughts on the court.

Even though she was unable to win a fourth consecutive French Open title last month, Roland Garros appeared to mark a turning point for Swiatek as she finally stopped overthinking and began to play with greater freedom again. After putting together a series of positive performances to reach the semi-finals, Swiatek left Paris after her defeat to Aryna Sabalenka feeling as if she had regained her confidence on the court.

While an exhausted Swiatek would usually prioritise rest in the aftermath of her four triumphs at Roland Garros, often returning home to Poland for a few days and then playing catch up for the rest of the grass court season, this year Swiatek headed straight to Mallorca for grass court prep.

Her run to the final Bad Homburg on the eve of the Championships, both her first final of the year and her first final on grass, represented another positive result despite her eventual defeat to Jessica Pegula. She has spent her first few matches at Wimbledon attempting to further build momentum and confidence.

“Honestly, it’s much more fun this year,” said Swiatek. “I had some practices where the ball was listening to me, which was pretty new on grass. I’m just looking for that feeling for the matches as well and today was a good day. In Bad Homburg, I played many good matches so for sure, I’m getting confidence. It’s a new experience feeling good on the grass.”

There was, of course, plenty of subtext to this match-up. Last year at the Olympic Games in Paris, the pair had an extended conversation while shaking hands at the net following Collins’ retirement from their quarter-final match. Collins later revealed that she had called Swiatek “insincere” during their handshake, the sympathy Swiatek had expressed fake. In general, Collins has made it clear that she does not care for Swiatek. In May, Collins was also responsible for one of Swiatek’s worst clay-court losses in recent years as she defeated the Pole in their third-round match at the Italian Open.

This time, however, the American had no response to an excellent performance. Swiatek served brilliantly, winning 86% of points behind her first serve throughout the match. Despite holding on to only one break for most of the second set, she continued to march through her service games with ease and she did not lose her serve all match.

On her groundstrokes, Swiatek also struck her forehand brilliantly, constantly using it to dominate the baseline exchanges. She showed her increased comfort with her movement by effortlessly soaking up Collins’ and forcing errors from the American with her defence.

With her spinny forehand, her preference for slower surfaces that afford her more time on the ball, her serving struggles and the general challenge of moving well on grass, there are countless reasons why Swiatek has struggled to produce her best on this surface. However, many different players and playing styles are capable of thriving on these more forgiving modern courts. Sometimes you just need time.