Elena Rybakina has withdrawn from the women’s tennis competition at the Paris Olympics.

The world number four was set to be the third seed for the event following Aryna Sabalenka’s own withdrawal. France’s Caroline Garcia now moves into her seeded slot in the draw.

Alternate Daria Saville of Australia moves into the main draw and will play China’s Qinwen Zheng in the first round.

Rybakina has reached the quarter-finals twice on the clay at Roland Garros, where the Olympic competition will be held, in 2021 and earlier this year.

She would have met Naomi Osaka or Angelique Kerber if she had won her first-round match against Jacqueline Cristian.

Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, missed out on a medal in Tokyo in 2021, finishing fourth after losing to Elina Svitolina in the bronze-medal match.

The 25-year-old has also withdrawn from the mixed doubles draw where she was slated to partner Alexander Bublik. They have been replaced by Nadia Podoroska and Maximo Gonzalez of Argentina.

Rybakina becomes the latest in a number of high-profile names to pull out of the competition on the women’s side including Ons Jabeur, Marketa Vondrousova and Madison Keys.

Jannik Sinner, Andrey Rublev and Holger Rune have all withdrawn from the men’s competition.

‘The Olympics loses another top tennis player’

Analysis by Matthew Futterman

The Olympic tennis tournament lost another top player Thursday as Elena Rybakina withdrew from both the singles and mixed doubles.

Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion and the world No 4, withdrew with an unspecified illness, leaving yet another hole at the top of the women’s draw.

Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 3, announced last month that she was not going to play in the Olympics, then withdrew from Wimbledon ahead of the start of the tournament.

Rybakina’s withdrawal is especially significant because she is one of the few players who has proven capable of causing trouble for the world No. 1 Iga Swiatek on clay. The past three years, no one has been able to beat Swiatek at Roland Garros in Paris, where the Olympic tennis tournament will take place.

However, Rybakina has been able to beat or push Swiatek to her limits on red clay at other tournaments, such as in Rome and Stuttgart.

Swiatek was an overwhelming favorite even before Rybakina’s withdrawal. This just makes a gold medal for the Polish champion seem even more inevitable.

(Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)