Latvia's Natalja Novikova named winner of UNIQLO Spirit Award for 2024
Latvia’s Natalia Novikova has been named winner of the 2024 UNIQLO Spirit Award, with the Guatemalan coach-player combination Giovanni Rangel and Jose Giron jointly named as a runners-up.
Launched in 2017 by the ITF and UNIQLO, the award was created to honour an individual or organisation who embodies the principles and core values of UNIQLO, who embraces challenge in pursuit of the promotion of wheelchair tennis and is admired for their integrity and character.
A former wheelchair tennis player with a career-high ranking just outside of the top 60 and former member of Latvia’s BNP Paribas World Team Cup women’s team, Novikova started playing wheelchair tennis aged 50 after a spinal injury.
Following a hand injury former Baltic champion Novikova was subsequently forced to stop competing, playing her last UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour matches towards the end of 2019, and she has since dedicated herself to the development of wheelchair tennis and parasports in Latvia.
Alongside becoming a fully qualified wheelchair tennis coach she started her own charitable foundation particularly aimed at helping disabled children to enjoy wheelchair tennis and has sourced funding, engaged parents and a coaching network to support the activities across Latvia.
Recognised in Latvia with an award for her work in 2020, Novikova’s development work has subsequently helped Latvia to establish a national junior wheelchair tennis team with a number of young Latvian players enabled to compete on the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour.
UNIQLO Spirit Award runners-up Giovanni Rangel and Jose Giron combine their individual passion and abilities to promote adapted tennis and wheelchair tennis in Guatemala.
Rangel’s commitment to the Guatemalan Tennis Federation’s adapted tennis programme has lasted for over 20 years and since meeting Giron in 2013 they have become a potent combination inspiring young people with and without disabilities, their parents and other players and coaches to realise what is possible through the platform of wheelchair tennis and sport.