Wimbledon champion slammed for behaviour immediately after winning £4million prize

Elena Rybakina has come under fire from tennis legend Pam Shriver for refusing to pose with a WTA official. The Kazakhstani claimed her biggest title since Wimbledon in 2022 after an impressive straight sets victory over world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka at the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia to net a £4million payday.

After the tournament, it is customary for the victor to be pictured with WTA CEO Portia Archer. However, despite posing with various other officials following the trophy presentation, she kept her distance from Archer, leading to awkward scenes. Rybakina's stance was believed to be a protest after her coach, Stefano Vukov, was banned for breaching the WTA's code of conduct. At the start of the year, the Croatian was suspended from holding an official role at tournaments for 12 months.

Concerns have been raised over several years regarding Vukov's behaviour towards Rybakina, whom he coached to the Wimbledon crown in 2022. In August, he successfully appealed against the suspension and returned to his role. Rybakina insisted she was happy to have Vukov back in her camp, saying "We never had [an] issue" and that "He never mistreated me."

After snubbing Archer, whose role involves overseeing code-of-conduct investigations, Rybakina was criticised by commentator and former US Open runner-up Shriver, who posted on X: "Imagine winning more prize money in one tournament than the entire Original Nine over their collective careers, then dissing WTA CEO because the CEO has tried to ensure stronger safeguards in your sports... it's hard to imagine."

The Original Nine were a group of women's players who broke away from the governing bodies of tennis in 1970 to launch their own professional tour. Shriver, 63, has previously expressed her disappointment that Rybakina had resumed working with Vukov. She posted: "It's time for our entire sport to finally stand up to known abuse and cult like manipulations of players. This is a very sad situation and my prayers are with ER."

Speaking in her winners' press conference, Rybakina gave little away about her reasons for refusing to stand with Archer, although she accused the WTA of a lack of communication over the Vukov issue.

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She said: "I think we're all doing our job and we had the opportunity to have conversations but in the end it never happened so we're all doing our job and I think we're going to keep it this way."

On her victory, she said: "It's been an incredible week. I honestly didn't expect any result, to go so far is just incredible. Today was such a tough battle."