Power Outage Halts Madrid Open, Disrupts Alex de Minaur’s Match
Australia’s top tennis player Alex de Minaur was among millions affected by a massive power outage that plunged large parts of Spain into darkness and halted the Madrid Open for hours.
De Minaur was set to face Canadian Denis Shapovalov in the night session’s final match on the Arantxa Sanchez Vicario court when the blackout struck, just after Coco Gauff had defeated Belinda Bencic 6-4, 6-2.
The widespread outage forced organisers to suspend all play for the remainder of the day following a delay of more than four hours.
Gauff shared updates from the darkened venue on Instagram, showing emergency lights in the locker room and recounting how she resorted to baby wipes after finding the showers and water were also out. “It really puts into perspective how much we rely on electricity,” she said.
In a dramatic moment on the main Manolo Santana court, Britain’s Jacob Fearnley was serving to stay in the match against Grigor Dimitrov when the lights went out at 12:34 pm local time (20:24 AEST). The blackout also left a suspended spider cam dangling above the court.
The ATP confirmed that two singles and one doubles match were underway when play was interrupted, and later issued a statement saying the suspension was necessary to ensure safety due to the failure of key electronic systems, including line calling.
Some matches, like Matteo Arnaldi’s clash with Damir Dzumhur, continued using manual line calls. Arnaldi went on to win 6-3, 6-4.
Earlier in the day, Australian doubles team John Peers and Matt Ebden were defeated 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) by Americans Chris Harrison and Evan King before the outage hit.
