Tennis star’s tears and relief after harrowing Dubai exit from explosions | Tennis | Sport

Tennis star Harri Heliovaara experienced a terrifying moment during his Dubai Tennis Championship when he was awoken by an emergency alert warning of incoming missiles at 2 am. He also didn’t expect to be told he couldn’t leave the United Arab Emirates. He was among several tennis players stranded in Dubai early last week after Iran retaliated against U.S. and Israeli strikes by launching attacks on the United Arab Emirates and neighbouring countries.

“Tennis has brought us into some strange situations and given us so many memories,” he told The Athletic. “I think we can add this one to the list.” The 36‑year‑old began checking the news on his phone and saw reports of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Soon after, updates of retaliatory attacks started to emerge before long Heliovaara could hear explosions and fighter jets overhead. “It suddenly started to feel very real,” he added.

The situation remains tense, with the U.S. and Israel launching further strikes on Iran. Heliovaara and Henry Patten were scheduled to play their final against Croatia’s Mate Pavic and Marcelo Arevalo of El Salvador and fully expected the match to be cancelled. Instead, they, along with singles finalists Daniil Medvedev and Tallon Griekspoor, were called into the ATP office and told the matches could still proceed, as local authorities had issued no shelter‑in‑place order. An ATP spokesperson later said in an email that the decision to play the doubles final’ was in line with guidance from local authorities at the time.’

Heliovaara said he still expected the match to be cancelled, and he and Patten delayed their warm‑up, assuming it would be called off. Despite being ‘very close’ to asking for the match not to go ahead, he acknowledged that ‘everybody is a little greedy,’ and the players knew that if the final was cancelled, none of them would receive the winners’ prize money or ranking points.

After deciding to play, Patten told Heliovaara that they had to win, knowing a final‑round defeat would likely linger in the back of their minds for days. “We were walking to the court, and at the same time you could hear this huge roar of fighter planes,” Heliovaara recalled. “It was crazy. And then, during the first set, we heard some explosions. And you think, ‘Are we still playing, really?'”

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He added that the sound of explosions formed part of what Heliovaara described as a ‘surprisingly normal’ atmosphere, with the crowd, though sparse, behaving much as they would at any other event. They went on to win 7–5, 7–5 and expected new measures to be put in place, but were simply told to remain in their hotel and seek shelter.

“That was the first real panic feeling that we got,” he said. “I thought, ‘OK, we really need to get out of here.’ A drone hit the airport that day, right next to the hotel for example, so you don’t feel comfortable going outside. We tried to remind ourselves that the actual chance of something dropping from the sky on us was very, very, very low. But it’s the uncertainty that’s the difficulty there. You don’t know.”

Flights out of Dubai were hard to secure, but one day Heliovaara was called downstairs by the ATP manager and told that Emirates staff were at the hotel arranging flights for guests – a luxury many others unable to leave the country did not have. He and his family managed to get seats on a flight to Milan and headed to the airport, which he said was ‘surprisingly normal.’

“I couldn’t believe that Louis Vuitton and all the shops were open, the lounges were open. What’s going on? The airport had been bombed two days ago, but everything looks normal now,” he concluded