Badosa won’t be making her second Olympic appearance in Paris.
Paula Badosa won’t be competing at this year’s Paris Olympics after deciding to use her protected ranking to enter Wimbledon and the US Open.
Badosa, a former world No. 2, is currently ranked at No. 118 in the world but it should be noted that she missed a good portion of the 2023 season due to a back injury and that she was ranked inside the top-35 when she played her last tournament of the 2023 season at Wimbledon.
Since Badosa was out of action for an extended time, she qualified for the protected ranking rule. And since the start of the season, Badosa has used her protected ranking to enter some of the biggest tournaments such as the Australian Open and French Open.
But with two Grand Slams remaining and the Paris Olympics also coming, Badosa could use her protected ranking for only two of those three major events – and she decided to go with the Grand Slams.
Will the Tokyo Olympics be Badosa’s first and lone Olympic appearance?
In the summer of 2021, Badosa made her Olympic debut in Tokyo, where she made the quarterfinal before retiring injured versus Marketa Vondrousova.
Now that Badosa is out of the Paris Olympics, her next chance at making an Olympic appearance can only come in 2028. However, that may be a very long shot considering that 26-year-old Badosa recently announced that her back injury was a chronic issue and that just playing three to more four years would be great.
“In Indian Wells, the doctors told me it would be very complicated to continue my career,” Badosa told WTA Insider at the start of the clay season.
“They said this is the only option we can give you and maybe you will have to keep doing that if you want to play for a few more years.
“I said, ‘A few more years? I’m still 26.’ For me, that was very tough.”