Kim Clijsters had been home from New York for just a few days when her 18-month-old daughter, Jada, slipped into the back garden without her noticing. Only the sound of Jada’s happy gurgles outside the back door alerted Kim to her whereabouts.
As her mother approached, Jada flashed an angelic smile and waved the dog food clutched in her tiny hands. Kim recalls the moment with an embarrassed laugh. ‘I thought to myself, “What sort of mother am I?”’
As she speaks, I notice children’s books written in English and Flemish littering the dining room table, along with a new consignment of wrapped tennis shirts from her Italian sponsor. Unwittingly, she has neatly presented me with the twin facets of her life: mother and world class tennis champion, ranked most definitely in that order.
Kim, 26, is wearing jeans and her hair is still damp from the shower after a hard training session as she warmly welcomes me into her house in Bree, the Belgian town where she grew up as the eldest daughter of Leo Clijsters, an acclaimed international footballer. Upstairs, Jada is having her afternoon nap oblivious to her role in her mother’s story, and the fright and relief she caused her.
When Kim won the US Open in September, she became the first mother to triumph at a major tennis championship since Evonne Goolagong was crowned Wimbledon champion 29 years ago. Motherhood has been good for other sportswomen: Paula Radcliffe won the New York marathon ten months after having her daughter, Isla, while Scottish golfer Catriona Matthew captured the women’s British Open championship this summer when her second daughter was just ten weeks old.
‘I think motherhood makes you mentally stronger, not necessarily physically stronger,’ says Kim. Incredibly, she had played just two warm-up tournaments after coming out of retirement, and Jada’s unexpected appearance on court alongside her mother at the presentation ceremony brought the house down.
‘I was more proud of seeing Jada there than I was of winning,’ says Kim. ‘There’s nothing better than being a mother. No win, or trophy, can come even close.’
Life has been kind to Kim; and it has been devastatingly cruel, too. In her time away from the sport – almost two and a half years – she had married her American boyfriend, Brian Lynch, a basketball player, and given birth to Jada.
But her happiness was brutally tempered when, at the beginning of last year, it was discovered that her father (who had split from Kim’s mother in 2005) had terminal cancer. Kim and her younger sister, Elke, nursed him at a farmhouse Kim owns, close to her own home, until his death in January this year, aged just 52. ‘I was eight months pregnant when he rang to tell me he had cancer,’ says Kim.
‘When he told us that the doctors had no cure for his illness, it was such a confusing time for me. I was carrying a new life inside me and I was also being confronted with death. I would have done anything for him. He was given just three months to live, but he was determined to stay alive as long as he could to see his first grandchild. He did that…’
Momentarily, her voice trembles with emotion. ‘Sorry,’ she whispers. Her father’s presence is all around us in the living room where we are talking. His ashes are kept here in an urn, surrounded by family photos and a solitary rose, withered through age.‘Dad was able to give Elke away when she got married in the summer of 2008,’ says Kim, pointing to a photograph of him proudly escorting Elke into church.
‘He looks so well, doesn’t he? I’m happy for that last year we had with him. He never went to hospital. He had always said that one day he wanted to live in my farmhouse, so when he was sick he moved there. If you have to say goodbye to someone I wish everyone could have it this way.
‘Before, I didn’t know if I would be capable of being part of a situation like this, but we were with him until the last second. It was very personal, very intimate. Dad was peaceful, and he looked at ease. It is comforting afterwards to know all that.’
Last month, Elke had her first child, a boy named Cruz Leo. Kim is his godmother. ‘I cried when he was born,’ she says. ‘My sister means everything to me. It’s special that her baby is named after Dad. He knows, for sure. It’s hard to explain; he may no longer be with us, but we still feel he’s a part of what we do.’
Kim explains what she means by telling me about something that happened at the US Open. She had been growing increasingly nervous as her courtesy car driver took her from her Manhattan hotel to the Flushing Meadows tennis facility, across the East River in the borough of Queens, for her semifinal match with world number one Serena Williams. Kim had already beaten Venus Williams in the fourth round, but Serena was the defending champion and, through wild weather disrupting the programme, Kim had not played for four days.
That was plenty of time for the match to play on her mind. Then, the car radio came alive to the unmistakable sound of soul singer Barry White.
‘Barry White was Dad’s favourite, and he had asked us to play that same song at the service we held at the crematorium,’ she explained. ‘I called my sister in Belgium, almost crying, and said: “Elke, listen!” Some might say it was a coincidence, but at the time I felt it was a message telling me I’d be OK.’
Serena became Kim’s sixth victim when she was punished a penalty point after cursing a lineswoman for calling a foot fault against her. As the foot fault had given Kim match point, Serena was out of the tournament.
‘I was so focused on the match, I had no idea what had happened,’ says Kim, clearly the better player on the night. Without a world ranking, and only in the tournament due to a ‘wild card’ invitation from the organisers of the US Open out of respect for Kim being a former champion, the Belgian had astounded conventional wisdom by reaching the final against Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki.
On the morning of her biggest match in four years, and her greatest-ever challenge, Kim calmly took Jada for a walk in Central Park in her buggy; a first for any woman finalist at the US Open.
‘Jada needed some fresh air, and it was helpful not to have the match on my mind,’ says Kim. She adds, laughing: ‘It was great to have hotel room service again, as at home I seem to be tidying up, changing nappies, or preparing food, from the moment Jada wakes up!’
Her husband Brian, who willingly surrendered the final year of his contract with a Belgian basketball club in March, in order to accompany Kim on the comeback trail, recalls: ‘Kim still had to take care of herself, eat properly and go to bed early during the tournament. But within all this, there’s her little girl making her laugh and me cracking jokes, or whatever. We were there to make sure that it wasn’t all business.’ Kim won the final in straight sets.
‘I don’t think any of us would have believed this could happen until it was over,’ says Brian. ‘It was a beautiful moment for us all. Kim deserved it. I know what she went through with her dad; and I know how hard she worked to get herself in shape. I am so proud of her.’
On the night she won the US Open, and received a $1.6 million (£970,000) pay day, Kim queued at 2.30am in a pizza parlour in a sleazy neighbourhood near Times Square. With Brian and her support team of Wim Fissette (coach), Sam Verslegers (osteopath and physiotherapist), Bob Verbeeck (business manager) and John Dolan (PR), she ate pizza and drank champagne at a nearby bar, still dressed in the tracksuit she had left the stadium wearing.
‘Nothing else was open by the time we had returned to our hotel,’ she says, laughing. Jada’s nanny Nicole Thijs had long since put Jada to bed in her cot at the hotel.
Two days after she returned to Bree, Kim was guest of honour at a reception at the town hall. After the formalities, she addressed a crowd of almost 7,000 well-wishers from a stage in the square; and then ordered drinks all round at her expense. The bill came to almost 710,000 (£9,000). ‘It was the least I could do,’ she said. ‘People had stayed up all night to watch some of my matches. I went to school here. I go to the supermarket, or the butcher, and it’s no big deal as everyone knows me.’
Her grandparents live two doors from her house, and her father’s home had been 200 metres up the street. ‘I had this house from when I was 16,’ explains Kim, who has won almost $16.5 million (£10 million) prize money in her career.
Next month, the house will begin to have a dramatic makeover when she goes to Australia, with Brian and Jada, to prepare for the next major tournament, the Australian Open in mid-January. ‘I want to make the house more personal, as it’s been like this since I was a teenager when it was originally designed,’ she says.
Kim and Brian want more children, but there is no rush, as she embarks on what she calls ‘my second career’. Winning Wimbledon is a goal; not least because that was the tournament her father loved the most. ‘We always rented a house there together and, as a football player, he loved the fact Wimbledon is played on grass!’ she says.
Kim admits that her part in the historic exhibition match, with Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Tim Henman, when the All England Club tried out the new Centre Court roof in May, had a profound impact on her decision to return to tennis. ‘When the invitation came from Wimbledon, that was when a switch in my head made me think about making a comeback,’ she says.
She intensified her training as her appetite for the game returned. ‘By the time I retired in April 2007, I cried after every match even if I’d won,’ she explains. ‘I strongly felt I needed a change. I didn’t want to be away from Brian for six weeks – and I couldn’t wait to be a mum.’
As she cuddles Jada, Kim knows she is holding something more precious than any one of the enormous collection of silverware kept out of sight in her basement. ‘I couldn’t play tennis if Jada wasn’t happy, if it was hard on her, or Brian,’ she says. ‘I love my sport, and I train hard. I hope I am showing that you can have your own life and still be a good mother and a good wife. But I won’t risk my family life falling apart for my tennis. Tennis would go!’
Kim Clijsters has proved herself to be an inspirational, well-balanced woman in her dual life as a mother and champion; just as her dearly missed father would have wanted.
Source: dailymail.co.uk(pictures from "YOU" Magazine included in the article)
No comments:
Post a Comment