Amelie Mauresmo: Rank my Olympic Medal to Fed Cup Title
Former Grand Slam champion Amelie Mauresmo recently went down memory lane to speak about the Olympic Medal she won at the 2004 Athens Olympics. “The presentation ceremony took me by surprise. When you win a silver medal in tennis it means that you’ve just lost in the final. You don’t have time either to take a shower or to even get out of the stadium. You’re told, okay, you get out of the court for five minutes and then you go back for the ceremony,” she wrote.
She further added, “I was very, very, very disappointed and within a couple of seconds I did switch because there was huge emotion coming up. And also a real pride because you’re actually getting beyond tennis so… it’s cool! You’re able to bring a medal back to your country.”
What is the importance this medal holds in her life? “I rank it equally with the Fed Cup title. If it had been the gold medal I would have ranked it as high as Wimbledon and the Australian Open. But as it’s the silver…”
Speaking about the entire event as a whole, she wrote, “I think the Olympic experience has really to be different depending on your expectations. Even though I’m not sure if the Coubertin motto is still appropriate: be there just to participate? All the athletes going to the Olympics are competitors! Maybe even if their actual level is not supposed to give them the opportunity to win a medal, they still might want to go as far as possible. In a way, it might also depend on your personality. I know that personally I found it hard to aim to win a medal and at the same time to fully enjoy the life in the Village.”
“Most of all, what I found harsh during the Olympics was to think that many athletes in many sports prepare themselves for four years for that event. And so, okay, they have a few events in between, they have a couple of world championships in the meantime, but they have the Olympics once in four years! We have four big goals a year, five when it’s an Olympic year, and some of us also have Fed Cup but these athletes, no… I have the biggest respect for those who are able to end up winning a medal: this is something huge.”
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2LqlqFH
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