Svitolina launches her own energy bar in Ukraine

Elina Svitolina finished up a diploma in nutrition during the tour shutdown and put it to use immediately.

"I think maybe two years and a little bit took me to get this piece of paper," she told press in Rome. "It was lots of reading, lots of writing, memorizing lots of stuff. I actually started because I was really interested in nutrition, what's affecting our body and how to feel better in general."

The 26-year-old has been running a healthy eating blog and just launched her own energy bar called SvitFit in Ukraine.

The SvitFit bars are vegan, sugar-free and gluten-free, and come in a variety of flavors featuring different photos of Svitolina brandishing a trophy.

"I wanted to do a nutritional bar because now these days I find lots of healthy bars, but in the same time they are full of sugar, full of different unhealthy flavored nutritional things," the world No. 5 said in Strasbourg. "I decided why not, especially in Ukraine."

She added that the health bar options in Ukraine are not as plentiful as somewhere like the United States, and her nation's knowledge of nutrition is lacking so her bars could fill a void.

Svitolina skipped the New York swing and picked her 2020 season back up in Rome with a quarterfinal run. She's the No. 2 seed in Strasbourg this week and is certainly glad to be back swinging a racquet instead of studying.

"It was very interesting for me to really get away from tennis and really focus on nutrition, and that all, you know, what affects my body, my mind," she said. "Very happy I could finally finish it, because it was really tough. The exams were tough. I had to write a lot, which was not easy for me. Lots of typing."

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