Julia Riera: Overcoming Challenges and Rising in the Tennis World

Julia Riera is one of the best 150 tennis players in the world. She is 21 years old and was born in Pergamino, in the north of the province of Buenos Aires. He grew up one block from a club (Gymnastics and Fencing), a place he adopted to train not only as an athlete but as a person, playing everything and for many hours a day, without limitations and in a healthy, “club” environment. , precisely. He kicked the soccer ball and shot into the basketball hoop, as did his mother (Florencia, a physical education teacher) and his father (Antonio -or Tonito-, an accountant by profession and a soccer player and basketball player in Sports, another of the clubs in the city). But she Julia was more attracted wielding a tennis racket. She was competitive since she was a girl, she would get mad if she lost.

The drive of Julia Riera, from Pergamin, on the cement courts of CenardManuel Cascallar

“My dad had to let me win because I would get very angry. I started going to the club’s little school, it went well and I started to play in the Under 10 Nationals. I played hockey for a few months; I went with my cousin and my sister, but I didn’t like it very much. I found tennis fun because it was very competitive and I had to figure everything out on my own. It was quite difficult, but I liked that challenge”, recalls Riera before THE NATION, at Cenard, where he lives -since last year- when he is in the City of Buenos Aires, after receiving a scholarship from Enard. Today she is the second best Argentine in the WTA ranking and her projection is exciting, especially because of how well planted she was in the season, winning matches in the Billie Jean King Cup team, in the subsequent W25 (she achieved, in consecutive weeks, two trophies in Guayaquil) and in the Rabat tournament, her first WTA 250, where she reached the semifinals after defeating higher-ranking rivals such as the French Kristina Mladenovic, the Egyptian Maiar Sherif and the Kazakh Yulia Putintseva. She started the season being 261st; she today she is 143 °.

Point in his best game: vs. Sheriff in Rabat

Riera was born in the same city as Paola Suárez, one of the best Argentine tennis players of all time, number one in doubles in 2002 and ninth in the individual ranking in 2004. “Once she did a clinic, but I was very shy and I didn’t dare to ask him anything”, recalls Riera, who loved to sit in front of the TV to watch Roger Federer and David Nalbandian, his “idols” (he also liked Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova). And she relates: “With my friends we were at the club all day. On Fridays, after training, we would stay and play hide-and-seek, we would eat… On Saturday mornings we would come back, we would take bills, we would play soccer. I went to school in the morning, I finished it in person. The last few years I missed a bit because I was traveling through Argentina; I liked going to school, but I couldn’t be on the graduation trip. I finished school and from two in the afternoon I trained until eight at night. I have two brothers: Franco, 17, who plays for the Pergamino basketball team, and Martina, 23″.

Riera, in Cenard, where he lives when he is not in his native Pergamino: “Tennis seemed fun to me because it was very competitive and I had to solve everything alone” Manuel Cascallar

-When did your relationship with tennis become more serious?

-When I was 12 years old I started taking more private classes in addition to the group ones with my friends. There we had a talk with my parents. In my house I already did technical exercises, many repetitions of movements. I would grab the racket or a mitt, go to the patio or in the living room, do the movements, my dad would film me and then we would correct it with my coach (Emilio Palena). We had a talk and my coach told us that in the first few months I wasn’t going to have very good results until I got used to it a bit and that’s what happened, but then it went very well for me, I started to travel a little more in Argentina and everything was taking another color.

Of course, not everything was smooth in the way of Riera during his professional development. Nor is it still. In an expensive sport, juggling finances to be able to travel collided with reality, time and time again. What’s more: she even evaluated her not to continue playing tennis.

Scene from a rehearsal by Julia Riera, closely followed by her coach, Juan Martín Aranguren Manuel Cascallar

“At the age of 13 or 14 I left tennis for a while, for almost a year. I was a bit tired from so much training and not being able to travel to play. My friends were also starting to go out and I had to spend all day training, I couldn’t travel a lot due to economic issues… so it was like I didn’t do one thing or the other. In the summer, instead of being in the pool enjoying with my friends, I had to be doing the preseason. I got tired and said: ‘That’s it, I don’t play anymore’. It was a difficult stage because I wanted to continue doing sports; If I didn’t do anything I would get bored. I am very hyperactive”, recapitulates Riera.

And he continues: “My coach traveled to a tournament with other boys from the club and Daniel Orsanic was there, who was director of Development (of the Argentine Tennis Association) and with whom I had a very good relationship. He asked about me, what I was doing, my coach told him and then Dani gave him the idea of ​​coming to Buenos Aires at the Cenard to train me for a few days and that’s how I came back. We came with my coach to practice with Dani and he began to do very well for me in tournaments. It was like playing again. There I said: ‘I have to be prepared to see if at some point I can go out and play tournaments.’ The tennis career is very expensive. I did quite well in the tournaments I played, I won a few ITF and Argentine Grade 1s. I felt that I played well, that I could do well, my coach was convinced and my parents always supported me and told me that if I liked it, I should continue. But it was difficult to budget for travel. We slept where we could. Once, in Paraná, I stayed in a convent where they rented dorms. I was with other girls, we cooked in the middle of the nuns (smiles). It also happened to me from going to apartments where there was no heating, we were dying of cold and we had to sleep with a jacket”.

In 2021, through the coach at that time, Riera got a sponsor, but the relationship with the coach ended in March of last year and the sponsor also left her. The help disappeared. The tennis player had a tour of Europe already scheduled, which was a problem due to the lack of resources. It occurred to her family to organize a raffle for $2,000 per number, with a prize of a weekend in Merlo (San Luis) for two people. The situation did not stop alarming because Riera was also already a player for the BJK Cup national team and, even with that status, she needed to be creative to try to continue competing and traveling.

“I lost the sponsor before traveling to Europe. On top of that, being there I lost the first games in the tie-break of the third set; I was hurt. Then it started to go well for me, but I twisted my ankle and had to come back. I made the recovery, I was ready to travel, but I did not have the money, so in Pergamino the raffle was organized among my family and friends. The people joined. It spread a lot on social networks, people contacted my family and the municipality also helped me. The hard thing was that I had to travel alone, without a coach, but it was an effort that I had to make. I did well, I won my first W25 title (in Trieste, Italy), putting a lot of punch. On top of that, while there, my grandfather passed away from Covid-19. I had to be strong and leave everything on the field. Luckily I met some tennis friends and the situation became more bearable for me. On that same tour we had to sleep one night in a train station because we lost the combination. Everything happened to me”, describes Riera, who since April last year has been trained solely by Juan Martín Aranguren, who had joined the team in September 2020 and had shared the work with Palena, until he went another way and the functions continued to be carried out by the members of the Pancho Aranguren academy.

The announcement of the raffle that the Riera family held in 2022 to raise funds so that Julia could travel to tournaments abroad

“The economic problem, the lack of infrastructure and the remoteness that we South Americans suffer also helps us to strengthen other senses such as the ability to fight, trying to do everything possible to win because you can’t go home right away,” says Riera. , present this week at the W80 in Brasilia. And he illustrates: “What I am saying is reflected in the fact that the Europeans do not like to play against the South Americans because we all fight. In that we are a little stronger. We have to go to Europe much longer, several months, when they can return home soon. Although it is hard, it makes you strong in the head and you know that you have to keep fighting and give it all up”.

Riera is a fan of River. And she attends the Monumental stadium whenever she can. In addition, she was one of the most valuable pieces of the Núñez team that in 2021 won the Interclub Championship of the First Division of the Argentine Tennis Association.

Julia Riera, a River fan, usually goes to the Monumental: the club gave her a shirt with her last name after her great tournament in RabatInstagram

-How is the experience of living in the Cenard when you are not in Pergamino?

-It’s nice because when you have dinner and share moments with people from other sports they tell you their things, their anecdotes. It’s good to relate and know that we are, more or less, all in the same, seeking to fulfill our dreams.

-How do you feel you have evolved as a player since the beginning of the year?

-I feel better intensity. As I play bigger tournaments and get used to the rhythm, I have to raise the level because if you don’t get passed over. Trust helps. We do a strong job with all my team. Since last year, my coach (Aranguren) trusted me, he knew he was going to arrive, but he needed time. Sometimes you have to crash in some games, most of the weeks you lose, but little by little I was adding good games, I went up and this year I gained confidence. I know that I can win good matches. The biggest difference between the WTA circuit and the ITF, the one that had been playing, is the intensity and the mental. In the ITF the players go down and maybe they drop the matches, but in the WTA they look for a way to beat you at any cost.

Julia Riera, at Cenard: dreams of continuing to grow as a professional tennis player on the WTA TourManuel Cascallar

-Did the performance in Rabat, in May, finish showing you that you can pursue your dream of standing out in professional tennis? You entered the tournament from 195th place and defeated two top 60 players (Sherif and Putintseva) and a former top ten player (Mladenovic). With that performance you moved up 45 positions.

-Yes, without a doubt. Something very crazy happened: I had dropped out of the tournament qualy because it started on Saturday and I was in an ITF in Turkey, but I left myself registered in the draw just in case. Other players began to drop, meanwhile I lost in the quarterfinals in Turkey and that same Friday I had to decide whether to leave me in Rabat or try to qualify for Roland Garros, but I was not going to enter Paris. Until they let me know that I was entering Rabat, I took a flight and went. I actually went to try, without much expectation, since it was my first WTA tournament. I felt like I was playing very well and maybe I could win the first round. When I saw the draw I liked it, I knew they were all very tough matches, but I liked the style of the rivals. I arrived and I immediately noticed the difference in the hierarchy of the tournament. But the first game I played very well, she (Mladenovic; 10th in 2017) was a bit irregular. Then against Sherif, who yells all the points at me, it was intense; I think it was the best game I played in my entire career. The tournament raised my level and let me know that I am there, close. Obviously I have to keep training and perfecting myself, but I have much more confidence in myself.

Conocé The Trust Project
2023-08-08 14:13:00
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