It’s hard to think of a rider better qualified to carry the Livingston brand’s famous arrow than one dubbed ‘the people’s champion’ by the cycling media. Now, tasked by Endura with recording his remarkable story, my opportunity had arrived. I had wanted to interview Matt Bottrill for years. So, we’ll see.Cycling is a small but rewarding world in which, sooner or later, your path crosses with that of everyone else in its midst. Anyway, I’m gonna say it right now: I’m not gonna play when I’m 40. But then, when I was 21, I said that I’d never play when I’m 30. “Venus says she wants to play until she’s 40. I definitely want to go out when I’m at the top, or somewhere close to the top. “If I start to think about it, then I might be like: ‘Okay, why am I still playing? I could be relaxing at home with my two dogs’. “I don’t like to look at it right now, while I’m still playing, because I still feel like I want to play,” she insists. Williams herself admits that she won’t look back on her career as a whole until she is regarded as one of the greats. I think that will keep on growing the more she continues to mature - and the more it becomes clear that she’s one of the all-time greats in the sport.” People saw what the lows were like for her with the hospitalisation, and she has gained a lot of respect for how she’s come back. “I don’t think she’s a universally beloved figure in New York, in the way that someone like Andre Agassi was, but I do think she has more support now than she used to. “They’re not 100 per cent behind her,” he says. Rothenberg believes Williams still has work to do before the New York crowds take her to their heart as wholly as they have done previous American champions. Special feelings aside, it was to the relief of every US tennis fan when her victory at last year’s Open was achieved without the controversy that has landed her with some hefty fines from the Grand Slam Committee. “It felt like it was just time for me to win that title again, after some tough years there. “It felt really, really good,” she says, recalling her three-set win over Victoria Azarenka in the final. Last year, it simply brought her a fourth US Open title. Olympic gold in London quickly followed, and then it was on to the US Open - a tournament that brought her the unbridled joy of winning her first Grand Slam, way back in 1999, and which provided the stage for the moments of madness that marred her performances in 20. Little more than a month after being ousted in the first round of the French Open - a defeat she says made her more miserable than any other, and which led her into the arms of French coach Patrick Mouratoglou - she won her fifth Wimbledon singles title. It wasn’t until the following summer that Williams got herself back to Grand Slam-winning ways. And not long afterwards, as the defending Wimbledon champion, she would go on to lose in the round of 16 at SW19, sending her world ranking plummeting to 175 - her lowest in 14 years. Her trip to the south coast ended with defeat to top seed Vera Zvonareva in the second round. While her health was clearly back on track, her tennis was understandably below the Williams standard. I don’t feel any pressure to do anything.” I feel a lot lighter now, like I don’t have anything to prove. “But I feel like what happened to me - everything that I went through - released a lot of pressure. “It was a really big nightmare for me,” she tells Sport when we meet ahead of the year’s final Grand Slam - the US Open, where she’ll be looking to win her fifth singles title. The winner of 16 Grand Slams was facing one of the toughest fights of her 18-year career. Before she could, however, the pulmonary embolism forced her back into the operating room. She needed two bouts of surgery, followed by ten weeks in a cast and a further ten in a protective boot, to recover. Williams looked down to see a pool of blood emerging from a multitude of cuts and, most worryingly, from a lacerated tendon in her right foot. One of the most dramatic chapters in Williams’ life began in July 2010 when, just four days after winning her fourth Wimbledon singles title, she stepped on broken glass when leaving a Munich restaurant with only a pair of sandals protecting her feet.
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