Wimbledraw 2026, and Vondrousova's Very Bad Idea
6/27/20261 hr 22 min
Ben and Tumaini are back together once more, this time at Wimbledon, where there's lots of stories in both draws, including Serena Williams' return to singles.
We start, though, with the news of 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova getting a four-year ban for refusing a drug test late last year. What was she thinking? Why was this ITIA decision inevitable?
We then jump into the draws, starting with the women where Sabalenka is the top seed, Pegula is Ben's pick, and Serena has taken up lots of room in the Wimagination this year.
We then switch to the men, and ask the question: even after the shocking French Open collapse, is it still Jannik Sinner vs. the Field?
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsTumaini Carayol· Host0:00
Miss Ostapenko has no challenges remaining.
Ben Rothenberg· Host0:02
Welcome to No Challenges Remaining live from Wimbledon. I'm Ben Rothenberg of Bounce, joined by Temani Carroll of The Guardian. Temani, of course, is NPR's Spain and Sub-Saharan Africa correspondent. Brief detour before we start with the tennis. We're gonna start with something about the 2023 Wimbledon champion before we get to this year's draws, which have a lot of stories attached to them as well. Spain, Sub-Saharan Africa, how are you feeling about both those, uh, beats in terms of how they're doing in the 2026 World Cup?
Tumaini Carayol· Host0:29
Uh, I mean, I'm, I'm very, very pleased with, with Africa.
Ben Rothenberg· Host0:34
Yeah.
Tumaini Carayol· Host0:34
Um- Africa's doing well. Yeah, Africa's doing great. Uh, th- there's a funny coy that- that, uh, gone around from the Senegalese... Well, he's actually Gambian, I have to say, but the Senegalese player, Nicholas Jackson, who, who plays for Chelsea and Bayern Munich, where, I don't know, he, he'd reposted a- an Instagram comment and said like, uh, like, "Stop it. We're, we're killing ourselves for Africa." And so now every time an Africa, um, African team plays, you know, people on Twitter are like, "Oh, who... Are you, are you, are you gonna kill yourself for Africa this time?" [laughs] And they've been killing themselves for Africa. Like the... I think at, at, at the moment there are seven teams in the knockout stages.
Ben Rothenberg· Host1:07
Wow.
Tumaini Carayol· Host1:07
Two more can, can go through. Two, two, two more on, like- One more. Yeah, yeah, for the third place teams. I think it's two more. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm happy with that. Spain's going decently as well. I'm not rooting for them as much, but yeah. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm happy with both.
Ben Rothenberg· Host1:23
Good. Glad to hear it. I've, I've- Who are you rooting for? I have watched, I've watched so little World Cup just because my place is... So we haven't