Donna Vekic suffers mid-air fright ahead of Guadalajara victory
Donna Vekic is one of the greatest women’s tennis players of all time and now she has been through something like the greatest tragedy.
“I can not describe the feeling,” said the Croatian. “I have always been a person who enjoys to play tennis. It is difficult and sometimes it hurts me, but I have always found my passion. I will never give up, believe me.
“I always have a smile on my face. I don’t want to think about the past. I have done everything I could to make my life the best I can, and I will continue with that, no matter what,” she added.
It all began two years ago, when Vekic, ranked world number three at the time, had her career prematurely ended by a catastrophic crash in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, when she had surgery to repair a tear of her tendon which occurred in an airplane that she was about to fly by herself.
Vekic told CNN in an interview a week ago that she had “an accident where I hit the runway” and this was “one of the worst experiences of my life.”
“I got hurt and I was taken off the runway and I was left with a huge load,” she said. “It was a difficult situation… but I was lucky. I was lucky in that I made it out of the plane with no injuries.
“The next thing I know I’m in the hospital and the first thing I can remember is the pain in my foot, which I had broken when the plane hit the runway,” she continued. “It was nothing serious, but when I woke up it was really bothering me and I could not walk for a few days and then I could not move.”
But that wasn’t the worst of it, or least of it.
Because after that, everything changed. Her career as a competitive tennis player, her personal life, everything as she knew it was over.
“I was left with just a few months to live,” she said. “It was a very hard decision for me, but one that I think was right at