Athlete of the week

Tennis player Ana Bogdan

Florin Orban, 13.02.2024, 13:45

The most important tennis tournament organized in
Romania annually is the Transylvania Open, held in Cluj-Napoca last week. The
tournament is part of the WTA 250 circuit. In 2024, up for grabs were 267
thousand dollars. The matches we played on hard court and were hosted by the BT
Arena, Romania’s largest sports hall with a seating capacity of 10,000.

The main draw included seeded competitors that
were placed among the world’s top 100 tennis players, best -placed of them
being WTA 43rd tennis player, the Dutch Arantxa Rus and 44th-placed,
Germany’s Tatjana Maria. Quite surprisingly, the winner of the Transylvania
Open wasn’t one of the seeded players, but WTA 78th-placed tennis
player Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. Former WTA number 1
player, in Cluj-Napoca, Pliskova won her first WTA tournament after a four-year
gap, or thereabouts. In the final, Pliskova outclassed Ana Bogdan, 6-4, 6-3.

Of the Romanian tennis players representing
Romanian in the Transylvania Open, Ana Bogdan had the most satisfactory run.

Reason enough for Radio Romania International to
designate Ana Bogdan the Athlete of the week.

Ana was that close to her first win in an
upper-echelon WTA tournament, after a very good run. Ana Bogdan first defeated Alicija
Parks, of the United States, then she overpowered Russia’s Erika Andreeva, who came
straight from the qualifiers. Ana also defeated top-seeded opponent, Arantxa
Rus, while in the semifinals she outclassed Jaqueline Cristian. However, after
two exhausting confrontations, in the quarterfinals and in the semifinals, Ana
Bogdan was defeated by Karolina Pliskova.

Ana Bogdan was born on November 25, 1992, in Sinaia. She turned pro in
2007. In 2009, she was 2nd-placed according to juniors’ world
rankings. According to
the WTA rankings, until 2018, Ana Bogdan climbed slowly but constantly. She then
remained close to the 100th position, yet she succeeded to climb up, in 2022
and 2023. The final she played in Cluj-Napoca secured Ana Bogdan 11 notches up,
from the 65th to the 54th place. She is the second
Romanian occupying a position according to the world rankings, after Sorana
Cirstea, who is 22nd-placed.