Sesil Karatantcheva

Sesil Radoslavova Karatantcheva (Сесил Радославова Каратанчева; born 8 August 1989) is a Bulgarian tennis player.

In her career, she won nine singles titles on the ITF Women's Circuit.

Karatantcheva became the youngest female to reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament since Martina Hingis in 1996.

At Wimbledon, she lost to Sharapova once again, being able to win just one game.

In 2001, 12-year-old Karatantcheva won the Orange Bowl tournament for her age group, defeating Alisa Kleybanova in the final.

Early in her playing days, she trained for approximately six months at the famous IMG Academy of Nick Bollettieri.

Karatantcheva played her first professional tournament in September 2003 in Sofia, Bulgaria at the age of 14.

As an unranked qualifier the next week, she defeated the No. 1, 2, and 3 seeds en route to her first professional tournament title at a small ITF tournament in Volos, Greece.

Karatantcheva went on to win two other ITF titles in 2003.

In 2004, Karatantcheva began her season at the WTA tournament in Indian Wells, where she defeated Alexandra Stevenson in the first, and upset the 17th seed Magüi Serna in the second round.

In 2004 she became the French Open junior champion.

On 7 November 2005, she reached her best singles ranking of world No. 35.

Karatantcheva is perhaps best known for reaching the quarterfinals of the 2005 French Open, upsetting seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams en route.

In 2021, Karatantcheva established her own tennis academy in Sofia.

She began playing tennis at the age of five.

2005 was Karatantcheva's breakthrough year.

She started off the year at the tournament in Gold Coast, Australia by qualifying, and then defeating the tournament's No. 7 seed Elena Likhovtseva before falling in the quarterfinals.

She then qualified for the Australian Open, losing to the No. 4 seed Sharapova in the first round.

Her most successful tournament to date was at Roland Garros where Karatantcheva defeated the No. 19 seed Shinobu Asagoe in the second round, and then stunned the world with her victory over the No. 11 seed and former world number one Venus Williams in the third round.

After defeating Emmanuelle Gagliardi, she fell to Likhovtseva in the quarterfinals.

In 2005, Karatantcheva also won a European club championship in Rennes as a member of the Cherno More Elite team (Bulgarian: Черно море Елит).

Her teammates were Virginiya Trifonova, Maria Penkova and Tsvetana Pironkova.

At the end of the year, Karatantcheva came up eighth in the Bulgarian Sportsperson of the Year rankings, earning 676 points.

She was also honoured by the Bulgarian Tennis Federation as the "Best female tennis player of the year".

On December 20, 2005, the French sports newspaper L'Équipe reported that Karatantcheva had failed a drug test earlier in the year at Roland Garros (after the 1/4 final match against Likhovtseva), and that she had appeared in front of a three-person panel of judges to explain the results.

The newspaper claims that Karatantcheva said she was pregnant at the time of the test, which would explain the high levels of nandrolone in her system.

Karatantcheva has denied all allegations, saying "I am shocked. I have not appeared before judges of the international federation."

On 11 January 2006, the ITF issued a two-year ban after two positive drug tests for nandrolone.

While Karatantcheva has claimed she was pregnant at the time of one of the tests, another laboratory carried out a pregnancy test on her urine sample, and it tested negative.

On 3 July 2006, the Court of Arbitration for Sport denied her appeal to overturn the ban with the argument that said nandrolone was found in concentrations which were inconsistent with the normal levels for that stage of pregnancy.

Karatantcheva did not play any matches in 2006 or 2007 following her drug ban.

She mainly trained in Pravets.

Karatantcheva's first match after the ban was in a pre-qualification tournament for a wildcard into the $25k tournament in Surprise, Arizona.

On 19 April 2010, she peaked at No. 154 in the doubles rankings.

In an interview prior to her match against 16th seed Maria Sharapova, Karatantcheva claimed that Sharapova had skipped a hitting session with her a few weeks earlier in Florida, and began a war of words with the Russian.

Sharapova then defeated Karatantcheva in three sets in the third round.

On April 19, she played her first match for the Bulgaria Fed Cup team.

Because of her age, Karatantcheva was restricted in the number of tournaments she was able to play.

In August, she reached the quarterfinals of a WTA tournament in Vancouver, British Columbia, and qualified for the US Open, before losing to eventual champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the first round.

Karatantcheva also reached the quarterfinals of the WTA tournament in Québec City, and captured another ITF tournament in December at Palm Beach Gardens.