Two-time reigning Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka has said she will not compete at the Paris Olympics due to a full calendar over which she criticised the WTA Tour.
"It is simply bad planning from the WTA. After the Olympics we have to fly straight to Canada for a mandatory event. That is too much pressure and affects the health," Sabalenka said.
"Unfortunately I have to sacrifice one tournament and at this stage of my career it is the Olympic Games."
World number two Sabalenka of Belarus was speaking ahead of her start into the grass court season this week in Berlin.
"It is simply too much. Now we are playing on grass, on clay at the Olympics, on hard court in Canada. It is so crazy and damages our health," she said.
The calendar is traditionally tighter in Olympic years, and with the tournament at the Paris Games played at the Roland Garros venue of the just concluded French Open, players return to clay from grass after July 1-15 Wimbledon, instead of heading straight to North America for the hard court swing culminating in the US Open in late August/early September.
The Olympic tournament is July 27-August 4, the Canadian event in the form of the Toronto Masters August 6-12, another Masters in Cincinnati August 13-19, and the US Open start on August 26.
Sabaleka said that her decision had nothing to do with the fact that Belarusians and Russians can only compete as neutrals and without their national symbols at the Olympics in connection with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
