Emma Raducanu has confirmed the appointment of veteran fitness trainer Yutaka Nakamura and predicted his expertise will help her become “one of the best athletes in tennis”.
A familiar figure on tour, Nakamura helped Maria Sharapova stay at the top of the game during an eight-year collaboration, then also worked with Naomi Osaka when she was still a serious contender at the majors. His impending deal with Raducanu was first reported by Telegraph sport a month ago.
Nakamura will accompany Raducanu when she flies to Brisbane on Thursday for an extended period of warm-weather pre-season training. Her first tournament of 2025 will be in Auckland – in fact the event starts on December 29, such is the relentless tennis – and she also hopes to play in Adelaide the week before January’s Australian Open in Melbourne.
“I just want to get out in the heat a little bit earlier,” Raducanu told reporters at a pre-season briefing on Friday. “Yutaka will be with me often next year. We are quite similar in the sense that we are very focused on our work: we don’t talk or gossip about other things.
“It’s nice to have someone who’s on the same page as you. I think it will help me to really explore how far I can go, for example on a sporting level. This is one of my great strengths that I am far from fully exploiting. I think I can become one of the best athletes in tennis. And the way I work with him and Nick (Cavaday, his trainer), it’s much more integrated.
“I throw myself onto the training field”
Raducanu continued to show signs of physical frailty in 2024, playing only 36 matches, while world number 1 Aryna Sabalenka played 70. Raducanu suffered only one “official” injury, when she She sprained ligaments in her foot in Seoul in September and was forced to halt her Asian swing, but it is believed she also damaged an abdominal muscle in August.
By adding Nakamura to her team, Raducanu has signaled her willingness to invest in this aspect of her game. And the fact that she wants to play in Adelaide, the week before the Australian Open, suggests a growing confidence in her resilience physical.
“I feel really strong,” said Raducanu, who has already put in considerable training since recovering from her foot injury. “I feel really fit. The only thing I can’t really talk about is that I haven’t played many matches.
“On the training ground I feel good, I throw myself, but it’s different from playing matches. I played a few at the Fed Cup (now the Billie Jean King Cup) and felt like I had recovered well. I wasn’t tired in the matches. It would just be good to see as the level increases, and if I have to play more (matches) in a row, how I will react.
As for the choice of Brisbane, Tennis Australia has a base there, and Raducanu will train with a friend: Australian No. 9 Priscilla Hon. “We’re going to hit it, hang out there, get in the heat,” she said. “I didn’t want to go straight to Auckland because if you get to a tournament too early you get a bit stale before the match. So I wanted to go there when it was tournament time.
“A lot of players are worried about supplements”
During Friday’s interview, Raducanu was also asked about the recent controversy about Iga Swiatek’s contaminated melatonin supplementswhich led to Swiatek being banned for a month after he tested positive for trimetazidine. Raducanu explained that anxiety over accidental contamination is a way of life for tennis players.
“Not just me, but a lot of players I know, we are quite worried,” Raducanu said. “Everything we take, we are very aware of the situation and how easily things can become contaminated. And there are certain supplements that I might want to take, but I can’t take them because they’re over-the-counter and they’re not batch tested.
“To batch test something, it costs a lot of money for a small thing, so it’s very expensive. For the things you really, really have to take, it’s obviously worth it. But you just have to remove a lot of things that you wouldn’t necessarily take. I am very careful about what I drink and what I eat. If I leave my water nearby, I get very nervous. But that’s just part of the sport. We are all in this together.
