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Sesil Karatantcheva

Sesil Karatantcheva (Сесил Каратанчева, pronounced: seh-SEEL ka-rah-TAN-cheh-vuh; born August 8, 1989) is a Bulgarian professional female tennis player. She was born in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

Tennis career

2003

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 #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.

2004

In 2004, Karatantcheva began her season at a large WTA tournament Indian Wells, California, where she defeated American Alexandra Stevenson in the first round, and upset the 17th seed Magui Serna in the second round. 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. 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 a WTA tournament in Quebec City, and captured another ITF tournament in December at Palm Beach Gardens.

2005

2005 was Karatantcheva's breakthrough year. She started off the year at a tournament in Gold Coast, Australia by qualifying, and then defeating the tournament's #7 seed Elena Likhovtseva before falling in the quarterfinals. She then qualified for the Australian Open, before losing to the #4 seed Sharapova in the first round. Her most successful tournament to date was at Roland Garros. Karatantcheva defeated the #19 seed Shinobu Asagoe in the second round, and then stunned the world with her victory over the #11 seed and former world number one Venus Williams in the third round. After defeating Emanuelle Gagliardi in the fourth round, she fell to Likhovtseva in the quarterfinals. 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 just win a game, losing 6-0, 6-1.

On December 20, 2005, the French sports newspaper L'Equipe reported that Karatantcheva had failed a drug test earlier in the year at Roland Garros, 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."

2006

On January 11, 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 July 3, 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.

2008

Karatantcheva's first match after the ban was in a pre-qualification tournament for a wild card into the 25,000 USD ITF tournament in Surprise, Arizona, USA. She won three matches in one day to win the event and thus won a wild card for the qualifying draw in Surprise, Arizona. In the qualifying draw, Sesil beat Susanna Lingman 6–3 6–3, Maria Kondratieva 6–1 6–0, and Kristina Kucova 7–5 6–1, to enter the main draw. In the main draw, Karatantcheva beat the 5th seed Sunitha Rao 2–6 6–3 6–2 in the first round. In the second round, Sesil beat Robin Stephenson 6–0 6–2. In the quarterfinals, Karatantcheva beat Magdalena Rybarikova 6–4 6–4 and in the semifinals she defeated the 2nd seed Viktoriya Kutuzova 7–6(4) 6–0. In the finals, Sesil played a tough three set match and overcame the 8th seed, American Angela Haynes, 6–2 4–6 6–4.

In late January, still unranked, she entered another $25,000 tournament at La Quinta, and again battled through three rounds of qualifying into the main draw, despite a scare in her qualifying match against American player Stacia Fonseca, who took the first set from the Bulgarian before the match swung decisively the other way. Having fended off a spirited challenge from second-seeded Angelika Bachmann 7–5 6–4 in the first round of the main draw, she made light work of subsequent opponents en route to the semifinals, where for the second tournament in succession she was scheduled to play Viktoriya Kutuzova. This time, the match ran to three sets, but Karatantcheva ultimately prevailed 6–1 3–6 6–4. In the final, Karatantcheva defeated the 3rd seed, Sandra Kloesel, 6–4 7–5.

Karatantcheva attracted criticism from the Bulgarian tennis federation for competing at La Quinta in preference to participating in Bulgaria's Federation Cup tie scheduled the same week. She was accused of breach of contract and threatened with a fine, but the Bulgarian teenager stood by her decision, which she had taken on the grounds that it was proving extremely difficult for her to gain entry even to low-level tournaments following the loss of all her ranking points and any right to protected ranking status after her ban, so she needed to work at re-establishing herself at least in the mid-hundreds of the WTA rankings as a matter of priority before tending to national team commitments.

In February, the Bulgarian was awarded a wildcard into the $75,000 Midland event, but her winning streak came to an abrupt end as she was defeated 6–1 6–2 in the first round by on-form qualifier Valérie Tetréault of Canada, who had raced through the three qualifying rounds for the loss of just nine games, five of them against former Top 50 star Mirjana Lucic. Sesil then attempted to qualify for a WTA Tier III event in Memphis but unfortunately lost in the first round of qualifying to Hana Sromova of the Czech Republic.

In early March Sesil successfully qualified for the $50,000 Las Vegas event including victories over Amber Liu and Elena Bovina. However, she lost in the first round of the main draw to wildcarded American Madison Brengle. She also received a wildcard into the qualifying event for the WTA Tier I event at Indian Wells but lost in the first round of qualifying to Evgeniya Rodina. Her luck changed however, when, at the end of March, she managed to qualify and reach the final of the $50,000 event in Latina, losing to Iveta Benesova in straight sets, 6-0 6-2.

In April, she reached the quarter-finals of the $25,000 event at Civitavecchia, losing to Betina Jozami of Argentina in straight sets. She is currently through to the final of the $25,000 event in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Her route through to the final included a victory over seventh-seeded Lauren Albanese. She will play Argentinian Soledad Esperon in the final.

In May, she played her first WTA main draw match since her suspention in Fes, Morocco against Elena Baltacha which she won 7-5 6-2.

In June, Sesil reached a QF of the 75 000 $ ITF tournament in Marseille. She was in the qualies of Wimbledon but managed to reach only the second match which she lost to Magdalena Rybarikova from Slovakia.

In July, a news appeared in the bulgarian press that there is a chance Karatancheva to change her nationality and for a period of three years to represent the asian country of Kazakhstan. This was confirmed from the Bulgarian Tennis Federation, but the Asian Gypsies eventually got cold feet and retracted their offer after being threatened by the World Tennis Federation to be suspended from all competitions.

Titles

Singles (6)

Legend
Grand Slam
WTA Championships
Tier I
Tier II
Tier III
Tier IV & V
ITF Tour (6)

No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Opponent in the final	Score
1.	September 28, 2003	ITF, Volos, Greece	Grass	Tsvetana Pironkova	6-4, 2-6, 6-2
2.	October 19, 2003	ITF, Carcavelos, Portugal	Clay	Rosa Maria Andres	7-5, 6-3
3.	December 14, 2003	ITF, Shenzen, PR China	Hard	Jie Zheng	7-5, 1-6, 6-3
4.	December 5, 2004	ITF / Palm Beach Gardens, United States	Clay	Sania Mirza	3-6, 6-2, 7-5
5.	January 20, 2008	ITF, Surprise, United States	Hard	Angela Haynes	6-2, 4-6, 6-4
6.	February 3, 2008	ITF / La Quinta, United States	Hard	Sandra Kloesel	6-4, 7-5

Grand Slam performance timeline

Tournament	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	Career SR	Career win-loss
Australian Open	A	A	1R	A	A	A	0 / 1	1-1
French Open	A	A	QF	A	A	A	0 / 1	4-1
Wimbledon	A	A	2R	A	A	LQ	0 / 1	1-1
U.S. Open	A	1R	2R	A	A	LQ	0 / 2	1-2
Tournament Titles	0	0	0	0	0	0	N/A	0
Year End Ranking	526	127	35	None	'''None		N/A	N/A

A = did not participate in the tournament.
SR = the ratio of the number of singles tournaments won to the number of those tournaments played.
LQ = lost in the qualifying tournament.