Andorra’s Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva is ready to evoke the spirit of Melbourne as she bids to ride the wave of expectation and make it back-to-back Grand Slam triumphs at the Roland Garros Junior Championships.

Jimenez Kasintseva shot to prominence earlier this year when she brushed aside all before her to be crowned Australian Open girls’ champion on her Grand Slam debut – six months prior to her 15th birthday.

With the 2020 Wimbledon Championships cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and no junior event taking place at the US Open, the rearranged Roland Garros tournament is just the second Junior Grand Slam of the year.

Not only does it provide Jimenez Kasintseva, the No.1-ranked girl in the world and top seed in Paris, with the opportunity to enhance her burgeoning reputation, the chance to join an elite club also beckons.

Only four girls have won consecutive Junior Grand Slams this century and the last to do so was current world No. 10 Belinda Bencic, who topped the podium at Roland Garros and then Wimbledon in 2013.

While mindful of the additional focus her exploits in Australia, current ranking and tournament seeding will bring, Jimenez Kasintseva is determined to harness that spotlight and use it to fuel her own ambitions.

“What brought me success in Australia was my attitude and the confidence I have in myself,” Jimenez Kasintseva told itftennis.com. “I was successful there because of the fight I showed on court and this is what I want to bring to Roland Garros.

“That fight is something I was born with. I have always been very competitive and I want to win so badly that all the fight comes out. I hate losing and I will do everything I can to get on court and win. That is why the spirit I have comes out.

“I intend to play every match like I did in Australia and fight for every point. It will be different this time as I will have all the pressure on me as No. 1 but I must challenge myself and see where I stand.

“Australia was different as I wasn’t one of the favourites to win the tournament. Winning successive Junior Grand Slams is extremely difficult, very close to impossible, but I will try and keep up with what I did in Australia and try to win.”

Jimenez Kasintseva splits her time between Andorra, the country of her birth, and Sitges in Spain where she trains and studies at the academy of her father, Joan Jimenez Guerra, who was a former ATP player who peaked at No. 505 in the world in 1999.

She also spent three years living in Louisville in the US state of Kentucky where her father was working, although retains huge pride in representing Andorra, which is home to just 77,000 people and one indoor tennis court.

“I am so happy to be representing Andorra since it is a very small country and I want to be an inspiration for players in Andorra to start playing tennis,” said multilinguistic Jimenez Kasintseva, who speaks Spanish, Catalan, English, Russian and French.

“I want to let them know that even though we are a very small country, if they have a lot of passion and they love this sport, they can live their dreams. I love representing Andorra.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the tennis calendar during 2020, and since the ITF World Tennis Tour resumed in August, Jimenez Kasintseva has contested three tournaments. Most recently, she reached the semi-finals at W15 Melilla.

“With lockdown, I lost track of my tennis a little bit,” she added. “It has been very hard for me to come back and I have had some tough moments and some tough tournaments.

“It has been hard lately but at the last tournament I played, I got some good wins and won my first ITF World Tennis Tour match and made the semi-finals. Since that tournament, I feel as though I am getting my rhythm back.”

Sixty-four players will contest the girls’ draw which begins on Sunday, including six of the current Top 10, with the aim of emulating Canada’s Leylah Annie Fernandez, who triumphed at Roland Garros last year.

Despite being three years Fernandez’s junior and having plenty of scope for further development, Jimenez Kasintseva sees her fellow left-hander as a source of inspiration, especially after a stellar year following her Junior Grand Slam success.

In 2020 alone, Fernandez has surged into the Top 100 and is currently preparing for a second-round showdown in the Roland Garros main draw after overcoming Poland’s Magda Linette on Monday.

“She is totally, 100% an inspiration,” said Jimenez Kasintseva, who reveals she has developed a love for dancing this year, although suggests she is “pretty bad”.

“She keeps growing as a player and that is what everyone is trying to do in Juniors. That is what we all want but only a small percentage of players get to do it. Those players are incredible and she is a great inspiration.”

Only time will tell whether Jimenez Kasintseva is able to follow in the footsteps of Bencic and claim a second successive Junior Grand Slam. For all the talk of increased pressure due to her past exploits, there is a reason for that additional focus.

Jimenez Kasintseva is the sole competitor in the girls’ draw to have experience of getting over the line and lifting silverware at a Junior Grand Slam and whatever she achieves in her career those memories will remain.

“At the moment of victory in Australia, I don’t remember what I was thinking – I was just so happy,” she added. “It was something so different to me and a unique feeling. I didn’t think I would be in that position.

“But everything was just so perfect there. I actually loved getting out of a match and getting into the ice bath away from the heat. I think that was my favourite part. Everything, though, is the memory. It was my first Grand Slam and it was incredible.

“Now, at Roland Garros, I am just like all the players but with a different number as my ranking. All the players are incredible and fight every day to get a better. I will be fighting also and I’m looking forward to enjoying every single moment.”