Ukraine: ‘I hope I live to reach 100’: World’s oldest tennis player staying put in war zone
- Leonid Stanislavskyi, aged 97, has played tennis with 21-times Grand Slam champion Rafa Nadal and dreams of playing Swiss great Roger Federer
- The WWII survivor build Soviet warplanes to fight Nazis and says: ‘I never thought that I would have to live through another, more frightening war’
Four months after 97-year-old amateur Leonid Stanislavskyi’s dreams came true when he played with 21-times Grand Slam champion Rafa Nadal, the Ukrainian is enduring his worst nightmare in Kharkiv as Russian forces bomb the city.
Stanislavskyi, who holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest tennis player, also had dreams of playing Swiss great Roger Federer but now he has only one simple wish – survival.
“I hope I live to reach 100. I have to survive this frightening situation,” he said.
“The war started on (February) 24th. From the 24th till now I have practically not gone out. I’ve stayed at home … I have supplies, the fridge is full. I’m sitting at home, not going anywhere,” he said.
“My daughter Tanya is in Poland, she wants to take me there. But I decided to stay here. I have bad hearing so I sleep at night and don’t hear anything. Last night there were bombings, in the morning there were air-raid sirens again.”
Stanislavskyi survived the Second World War, when he was an engineer who helped build Soviet warplanes to fight the Nazis.
