Last Updated on December 26, 2021
Daniil Medvedev‘s victory at the US Open cemented his status as the star of world tennis. Not only did he take the biggest title in tennis, but he did it vividly in the final by defeating the great Novak Djokovic, going for the ultimatum tennis record, the calendar Slam.
As is often the case, Medvedev came to tennis by accident. But that doesn’t mean his path to the elite was easy and spontaneous – quite the opposite. As you can imagine, it didn’t happen without his parents’ involvement.
Daniil Medvedev’s Parents
There seems to have been a cult of education in the Medvedev family. The tennis player’s parents, Sergey and Olga, say that Daniil was involved in everything from childhood: music, drawing, languages, chess, swimming, and he studied at the prestigious Lyceum of Physics and Mathematics.
“If we stopped at something in terms of his studies,” Sergei Medvedev told Sport-Express, “we tried to find the best institutions, and in that best institution – the strongest teacher. If we went to study chess, we went to the Petrosian School. We felt that to be in a non-serious place and with a non-serious teacher was a waste of time. As a rule, parents look for somewhere closer, just so they don’t have to sit at home. We had a different approach.
At the same time, parents left their son enough freedom of choice so that he could do what was interesting to him: Over the years, for example, swimming and chess fell away, but languages remained. Daniel’s vocabulary in English and French surprises him regularly. Later, when tennis came to the fore, the parents became producers of the family show: the father was responsible for finances, and the mother for logistics. The family’s move to France was also conditioned by Daniil’s tennis prospects and required the mobilization of all resources and even the sale of the house, but even there Medvedev Jr. was shielded from any non-sporting concerns whenever possible:
“In France there was a rise at six. At 7:30 practice already started,” says Olga Medvedeva. – By the time I left, I had to get my bags of clothes and proteins ready. Then my dad takes him to the training session. After that I had to go home fast, which was about 10.30 or 11 o’clock. By that time, of course, I had to have dinner ready. Danya even had time to sleep and rest between workouts. He went to the second one fresh and full, not thinking about everyday problems. He was completely free from all matters except tennis.
After winning the US Open – 2021 Daniel Medvedev can now boast a Slam in his trophy collection. As a matter of fact, the only major tennis achievements of the Russian is to win the Davis Cup as a member of the Russian national team, win the Olympic gold and become number one in the ATP ranking.
