Emma Raducanu talks self care, bouncing back from injury and why there's more to life than tennis

Emma Raducanu is a trailblazing athlete - with only three years of touring on the professional circuit under her belt, she's already made a lasting impact on the world of sport.

The British tennis pro famously won the US Open in 2021, becoming a Grand Slam champion at just 18 years old. The historic win saw Raducanu become the first British woman to win a Grand Slam singles title since Virginia Wade in 1977, propelling her to super-stardom.

“Winning the US Open was my career highlight,” Raducanu told Marie Claire UK when we spoke to her as part of our Women in Sport Special. “It came with a lot of challenges but I think that what it gave me outweighs everything else.”

Now 21, and off the back of a painful 2023 lost to injury, Raducanu is back and stronger than ever. While she didn't scoop the crown at Wimbledon this year, she's adamant that winning one day is her greatest ambition.

“Long term, I want to win Wimbledon. That’s my number one goal,” she told us. “But in the short term, I just want to keep staying healthy and improving my skills. Working on the actual development of them rather than any immediate results - that’s my priority right now.”

Below, Raducanu chats candidly to MC UK, sharing her top wellness tips, her go-to self care hacks, and the lessons she’s learnt from her already groundbreaking tennis career.

Make sure you check out the rest of our Women in Sport special while you're here, including our inspirational cover interview with Team GB sprinters Daryll Neita and Laviai Nielsen, plus 14 fun facts about the athletes that you won't know yet. Not to mention, supporting features on the first ever gender equal Olympics, from why mothers are underestimated in sport to the lack of research into female athletic performance, as well as the most iconic Olympic fashion moments throughout history.

1. Tough times are inevitable

“Self belief is important for getting through the tough times, because they are inevitable. You’re going to face setbacks and injuries, and fears are going to set in, but I think to really achieve great things, you need to pair that with self belief. One quote that has really resonated with me over the years is that you get through 100% of the days that you think you can’t. I have for sure felt tough times - when I was 18, before the US Open, in the pandemic like everyone I’m sure, but we all got through it. And we look back and that moment in time isn’t as significant as it once was. So I think having perspective is huge, and getting into a helicopter, zooming out and just looking at this moment in the timeline of your life, really helps put things in perspective. It helps to keep me on the right track.”

2. Take time to recover properly

“I think the biggest lesson I’ve learnt in terms of injury recovery is not to rush back. My impatience is probably one of my biggest downfalls because I basically rushed the process of my recovery, and set myself back many months. Instead of taking me four months to return to play, it took me eight, and it took me seven months without hitting balls, when I should have been hitting balls after a month and a half. So I think having people who are really strict with you in coming back from injury is important. People who are literally counting every shot that you hit, and making it really scientific not just on feeling, because sometimes your mind overtakes your body, and by pushing more you’re actually setting yourself back.”

3. Laughter is a healthy habit

“I have found a lot of healthy habits to be essential - hydration is key and sleeping is a major component (I really try and prioritise my sleep over training and competition weeks). But I also think that just having a youthful mindset is really important. Living with an element of ‘carelessness’ in a way is quite refreshing. It’s important not to take everything too seriously - to be able to laugh and joke about things that might be very difficult, and spin them into a funny or happy thing.”

4. Find a beat that works for you

“I don’t actually have a playlist because my attention span is so short that I change my favourite genre, song and artist literally every four days. It all depends on how I’m going at that moment in time. Usually it’s something energetic with a beat, but sometimes it’s fast-paced classical piano - it all depends on how I’m feeling. Recently, I’ve been listening a lot to ‘Am I Dreaming’ by Roisee, Metro Boomin and A$AP Rocky. It’s a combination of classical music at the start and then it goes into a beat, so it’s got the best of both worlds.”

5. Allow yourself to take in the moment

“I take my headphones off right before I walk into the court so I can soak it all in. I really want to take in the crowd, the environment and the support. I was very excited to compete again in Wimbledon this year - I had to miss the tournament in 2023 and I think I actually forgot that the support from the home crowd was so great - I loved it. When we start the match, we don’t really look up or around - we’re very focused on our game, so I give myself that moment before to really take it all in. To look up and enjoy the moment, then once we do the coin toss, it’s ‘go time’.”

6. Comfort foods can be good for the soul

“Comfort foods aren’t really part of my healthy lifestyle, but I guess they are healthy for the soul and the mind. I love my mum’s homemade spring rolls. And when I won the US Open, we didn’t go to a fancy restaurant or anything afterwards. Instead, I went home and my mum made dumplings and spring rolls. That for me is the most rewarding of moments, and where I truly feel the happiest.”

7. Prioritising alone time is my self care

“I’m a very independent person and I like spending a lot of time by myself. There’s so much stimulation in my daily life and there’s a lot of people around me, so I really like having those hours to myself before bedtime, even if it’s not doing anything productive. Sometimes I’ll read, and sometimes I’ll just scroll aimlessly or online window shop - I’ll just put things in my cart and then close the tab. But just having that time to unwind and destress is really important for me, and I won’t be able to sleep without it.”

8. Reading is the perfect form of escapism

“Reading is an escape for me. I just read Creativity, Inc. by the founders of Pixar which was really good and I could apply a lot of lessons to my own life. I don’t read fiction because I have this thing in my head where I need to be productive all the time. And if I feel like I’m doing something where I’m not learning, I will feel guilty. But reading removes me from my daily life - you get so absorbed in a book that you don’t really have any brain power to think of anything else. It’s an escape but you’re also learning something, so for me that’s two birds with one stone.”

9. There’s more to life than tennis

“I think it’s very easy in tennis to panic, and I’m guilty of it. You feel like you only have 10 years of your career ahead of you, and that it’s going to be over before you know it. Sometimes 21 feels so old, and then I remember that in the timeline of my career I still have 10 years of slams ahead of me - even 15 if I really want. And while it goes by very quickly, I’ve only had three years on tour so far, so there’s a lot more learning and developing to do. There’s also a big chunk of life that happens after tennis. We think when we hit 35, our life is over, but there is so much still to come - many people are just starting their life at that point. So, of course I want to make the most out of the years that I have on tour, but I also need to keep in perspective that there are other things in life than just tennis.”

10. Just keep swimming

“One piece of advice that has stuck with me literally since I was a child came from watching Finding Nemo with my mum. The fish would say, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming”, and my mum has repeated that to me ever since. Even now, it’s like no matter what happens, you just have to keep swimming - you have to keep going and forget about it. You honestly have to have short term memory loss in tennis because you will lose every single week and you have to have the resilience to keep going. And day by day, you’ll somehow reach your goals without even knowing how or why it happened, but it’s because you accumulated all those days of purposeful work.”

Emma Raducanu is an evian Global Brand Ambassador, championing healthy hydration all year round on and off the court. Discover more about the importance of healthy habits and living young at Evian.com