The tennis stories of 2024, from doping bans and Grand Slam titles to a bee invasion

Happy holidays, and prepare for the greatest gift: tennis returns tomorrow, December 27. In the spirit of looking back on the previous season and remembering all the moments big and small that defined it, here is a compendium of tennis stories of all kinds from The Athletic’s tennis writers, Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, with … Read more

Mykhailo Mudryk doping test ‘a dagger to the heart of Ukrainian football’

It was only six months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when, on a balmy September evening in eastern Germany, I came across Mykhailo Mudryk shortly after midnight. This was September 2022 and Mudryk was by then an emerging talent for the Ukrainian champions, Shakhtar Donetsk. He scored and was the team’s major attacking threat in … Read more