When Roger Met Mirka
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Two crazy kids falling in love at the Olympics
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 Ten years ago Monday, Roger Federer was a 19-year-old Swiss tennis player ranked 36th in the world.
He was in the final few months of a very nice year on the ATP tour, having upset No. 4 Nicolas Kiefer at the Queen’s Club and reached the fourth round of the French Open.
At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Federer fought his way to the semifinals before falling to American Tommy Haas. His time on the court ended in disappointment as he lost the bronze medal match to France’s Arnaud Di Pasquale, a player who had peaked at No. 39 earlier that year.
But even the disappointment of missing out on a medal didn’t deter the young Swiss from thoroughly enjoying the experience of the Olympic village, where he shared living quarters and dining halls with his fellow countryman, themselves the elite in every sport across the board.
Things were even better when he met 22-year-old Mirkoslava “Mirka” Vavrinec, herself a member of the Swiss women’s tennis contingency.
In the funny way that fate intervenes some times, Vavrinec received a wild card to the Olympics by fighting her way back into the Top 100 that year. She had suffered mightily from a heel injury that saw her plummet out of the top 300 in the span between 1997 and 1999.
She didn’t have much success in Sydney, falling to 10th-seeded Elena Dementieva in the first round. While Mirka faltered early, Federer flourished and eventually let her on to the fact that his friendship with her had become something entirely more.
Of course, getting back to the “real world” of the professional tour put an immediate damper on the burgeoning relationship. Two weeks after the Olympics ended,Vavrinec was playing in Japan, Federer in Vienna. While he was reaching the finals in Basel, she was still in Shanghai. When she reached the semifinals in Pittsburgh in early November, he was falling in the second round at Lyon.
It wasn’t until three months after the Olympics that the pair was actually playing on the same continent at the same time – with Federer in Paris and Vavrinec in Naples.
Eventually, the word got out that the pair were dating, and they became the buzz of Switzerland, despite their attempts to keep things under wraps. Vavrinec ended 2000 ranked 88th in the world, Federer 29th.
Vavrinec struggled to move up in 2001, not reaching the third round of a tournament until the US Open.
Federer’s game improved by leaps and bounds as he won at Milan, reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon and the fourth round of the US Open, where he lost to Andre Agassi.
Vavrinec was ranked 76th on Sept. 10, but a torn ligament in her right foot plagued her, eventually forcing her to retire at age 24.
Federer, of course, would reach heights unreached by any other man in tennis in the years to come. He ended 2001 at No. 13, entered the Top 10 for the first time in May of 2002, and has remained there permanently since that October, winning an astonishing 16 Grand Slam titles since.
Although they remained together the entire time, it wasn’t until April 11, 2009, that Vavrinec and Federer exchanged vows in Basel. The couple’s twin daughters Charlene Riva and Myla Rose were born three months later.
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Posted by Nick on 9/27/2010 4:25:08 PM
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