Abu Dhabi champion Belinda Bencic finally gets chance to fulfil skydive wish

When Belinda Bencic won the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships in 2019, ending a near four-year title drought, she vowed to celebrate with a skydive.

Nearly four years on, the Swiss is yet to fulfil her wish of jumping out of a plane over Palm Jumeirah, but much like the similar-length delay between those past titles, the wait is almost over.

Bencic will be back in Dubai later this month aiming to conclude the WTA Tour's Middle East swing much the way she started it: with another title.

The 25-year-old world No 9 collected her second trophy of the year at the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open on Sunday, fighting back from the brink of defeat and saving three match points against Russia's Liudmila Samsonova for her eighth career title.

From Zayed Sports City, Bencic headed straight to the airport to hop on a plane to Doha for the Qatar Open. From there, she will be back in the UAE and once her Dubai campaign is finished, there will be "no excuses" to not go skydiving, she said.

"It never happened, can you believe that? My boyfriend promised me that if I won the tournament we would do it," Bencic said, "but now there is a great extreme sports woman in Switzerland and she's a good friend. She's coming to Dubai when I'm there, so I want to ask her to do it with me."

The athlete Bencic referenced is none other than Geraldine Fasnacht, a world renowned freeride snowboarder, base jumper and wingsuit pilot who has earned the nickname "bird woman".

"She does a lot of skydives and wingsuit flying, all this crazy stuff," Bencic said. "I will ask her to take us because I can trust her! She will take me and [boyfriend] Martin [Hromkovic]."

Should the skydive finally materialise, it will add to a bank of many happy memories for Bencic in the