Anabel Medina: “The BBVA Open Valencia poster is spectacular”

The director of the BBVA Open Valencia, Anabel Medina, showed in an interview with EFE her satisfaction with the poster that they will have this year in the tournament and assured that they looked for the ideal date for their celebration, which together with the suspension of the Asian tour has allowed them to have a very powerful final table with four top-100 players.

The Valencian tournament, ITF 80,000 category, will be held on the clay courts of Sporting Tenis Valencia from 13 to 19 of this month and It will feature the top 100 Arantxa Rus, Martina Trevisan, Nuria Parrizas and Mayar Sherig; in addition to veteran Italian player Sara Errani, Brazilian Laura Pigossi, bronze in doubles at the Tokyo Games, Aliona Bolsava, the current Wimbledon champion in junior category Ane Mintegi or the current junior world number 1, the Andorran Victoria Jiménez.

“The poster is spectacular, we already aspired to have such a painting because due to the situation derived from the covid, the Asian tour is canceled and we are looking for a date that would be the ideal to be able to have such a team and in the end it has been very good, and I encourage the fans to get closer to Sporting because there are going to be games of a high level, “he said.

The former Valencian tennis player attended EFE while performing her duties as a commentator for the United States Open, the last Grand Slam of the season in which two teenagers aged 18 and 19, like the Canadian Leylah Fernández and the British Emma Raducanu, achieved their classification for a surprising final this morning.

“That one past, a final that revitalizes women's tennis with two such young players and after the tournament they have done, with Raducanu arriving from the previous phase and LeylahFernández winning all the favorites”, admitted the captain of the Spanish tennis team.

Precisely promoting emerging tennis is one of the great objectives set by Anabel Medina in the project that he devised five years ago when he created a women's tournament in Valencia that year after year has risen in category and that looks on the horizon to become a WTA tournament.

“That was one of the reasons we had within the tournament, for us it is important that Spanish players have the option to participate, give them those opportunities to be in the final phase as with Masarova, Leyre Romero or Marina Bassols, as in the previous phase in which there are Valencian players, we also want them to participate and have that opportunity that they might not have at other times, “he explained.

“The values ​​of this project that began five years ago is to help women's tennis, Spanish and Valencian and above all I was very excited to have a tournament in my city, “he added.

This year, the project led by Medina changes its venue and could be considered a new tournament, since the Valencia Tennis Club maintains the tournament that Medina previously directed. and it will also be held after the BBVA Open Valencia, after having also been promoted to the ITF 80,000 category.

“This change is due to the projection of the event, we considered it important to make that qualitative leap and I am happy to continue with my project that has cost me a lot, in which I have invested a lot and so it continues to grow, and that both the players and the fans enjoy it, “he said.

“It is super good that there are two tournaments, because in the end two tournaments of this category in the same city, the players analyze their calendar and they seek the greatest comfort when traveling and that you have two events of this category within three kilometers of each other also makes the picture so strong, “he continued.

And it is that Anabel Medina was delighted with the investment made by the RFET that has allowed the proliferation of ITF tournaments in Spain, of which seven are ITF 80,000 and 60,000 categories, in addition to scholarships for female players and currently having twenty U-18 tournaments, which allows Spain to be the country with the most championships in this category worldwide.

“It is fundamental, in the end one of the objectives that I had when I visualized the tournament project was precisely that, when I was competing at the beginning of my career there were no events in Spain and I had to train my career outside the country and I see it essential that the players have the opportunity to play at home, have options to receive those invitations, “he said.

“At an economic level it is logically cheaper to travel by car or go by train to play in a city in your country than to have to leave outside of Spain. From the RFET a spectacular work has been done with the investment so that there is that number of tournaments that are a lot and also each tournament is doing its bit and making a big effort to be able to give the girls possibilities to compete; concluded.