0:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the bad guys win. 0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the people with the worst intentions get what they want in life and their victims lose everything. 0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Like when one unemployed German lathe operator attempted to murder the best tennis player in the world with a 9-inch bony knife, a 1993 on live TV. 0:23 [SPEAKER_00]: This summer, the Serbian tennis player Novak Jokovic won his 19th and 20th major tournaments at the French Open in Wimbleton. 0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He is now tied with Roger Frederick and Raphael Nadal, with 20 major titles, the most 0:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Having followed his career, I've been thinking lately, again, of Monica Celeste. 0:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Much like Joker Vitch, Celeste was an exciting, charismatic, moldbreaker, for modern day Serbia. 0:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, part of Yugoslavia, the two players' hometowns, Novissad and Belgrade, are just an hour apart, but nobody ever tried to murder Joker Vitch on a tennis court. 1:10 [SPEAKER_00]: If only Celeste could say the same. 1:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The start to her career is simply unmatched in the history of women's tennis. 1:17 [SPEAKER_00]: She warned her first major at the French Open in 1990. 1:21 [SPEAKER_00]: At age 16 and beginning in 1991 went on to win seven of nine grand slam events. 1:28 [SPEAKER_00]: for a total of eight wins in her first 14 major tournaments. 1:32 [SPEAKER_00]: In January of 1993, she won the eighth by beating the former number one, Steffa Graff, in three sets. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: For those two years, from 91 to 93, Celeste wasn't just the most dominant women's tennis player, she was the most dominant athlete and any sport and any gender. 1:52 [SPEAKER_00]: and at 19 years old, she was just getting started. 1:56 [SPEAKER_00]: For context, Novak Jokovic, her countryman, now on the brink of becoming the greatest men's player ever, didn't win his first tournament until he was 20. 2:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But in 1993, not everyone was cheering. 2:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Before the exciting young Yugoslavia had come along, Stevegraf had been the darling of the tennis world. 2:16 [SPEAKER_00]: She was quiet, graceful, and blonde. 2:19 [SPEAKER_00]: She danced and sliced her way around the court with smooth efficiency. 2:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Just as most pundits thought a woman should play. 2:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Celeste was a thumper. 2:28 [SPEAKER_00]: A heart-hitting lefty with dark wildly curly hair, who grunted, when she swore. 2:34 [SPEAKER_00]: She outmuscled her opponents with risky, aggressive shots from everywhere on the court. 2:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And along with her physical power, her fearlessness and mental toughness set her apart. 2:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Tennis historians will tell you that the graph's Celeste rivalry. 2:48 [SPEAKER_00]: With its radical contrasts and style and personalities, still represents the most popular era in the history of the sport. 2:55 [SPEAKER_00]: From 1990 to 1993, the woman's game was arguably more popular than the men's, which has never happened before, or since. 3:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But in April of 1993, with Celeste sitting alone at the top of the tennis world, the rivalry changed. 3:11 [SPEAKER_00]: During a routine dismantling of a lower-ranked opponent, the Bulgarian, Magna Lina, Maliva, Celeste took an extended water break on her court-side bench. 3:22 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a sleepy Friday afternoon in Hamburg, Germany, and almost no one took notice when a small, balding man stepped over the court-side barrier with a boating knife as long as his forearm, his name was Gunter Parch, and he was a supporter of Graff, a fellow German. 3:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The more said last one, the matter he became, and when Celeste began to dominate the rivalry, he was so distraught he considered killing himself. 3:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, he decided to kill Celeste instead. 3:55 [SPEAKER_00]: when the woman's tour came to Hamburg. 3:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Partia bought a ticket for one purpose, stopping his hero's rival. 4:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Once passed the barrier, Partia raced to Tusseluss's back and raced his knife with two hands above her head, relaxed and unaware of the white bench in front of him. 4:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He was aiming for her heart, or if he missed that, her spine. 4:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Soon, the tip of that 9-inch blade would be visible on her chest, sticking out from her tank top, so being her chest with blood. 4:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But as the steel flashed in the sunlight, a thing called out, and Monica turned, not all the way around, but enough to save her life. 4:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Partly missed his mark, and within seconds, security was dragging him off the court. 4:41 [SPEAKER_00]: right before the stabbing, the television broadcast cut away from the court as it tends to do between games, with the score on the screen and the crowd murmuring in the background. 4:52 [SPEAKER_00]: You hear the fan and then Salessa's muted cry. 5:19 [SPEAKER_00]: When the coverage cuts back to the court, you see Celus with a hand on her back, feeling the wound but unsure of what has happened. 5:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Officials quickly surround her and move her slowly to the ground. 5:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Parti is in a choke hole, as another man tears the knife from his hand. 5:36 [SPEAKER_00]: While security drags him off the court, Celeste sits in the red place surrounded by a growing group of officials. 5:43 [SPEAKER_00]: They tell her she's been stabbed, and we watch her face shift for the next few minutes between confusion and horrified comprehension. 5:51 [SPEAKER_00]: She nearly faint, nearly hyperventilates, and appears to be questioning everything. 5:56 [SPEAKER_00]: She thought she knew about what it meant to stand on a tennis court. 6:01 [SPEAKER_00]: She would never be the same. 6:05 [SPEAKER_00]: When she heads to the locker room for further evaluation, she forfits the match, the first ever loss in tennis history on account of being literally stabbed in the back. 6:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Maliva, her overmatched opponent, advances by default, and loses in the next round. 6:22 [SPEAKER_00]: In the week that follows, Celeste undergoes surgery to repair the severed muscle, and tissue in her back. 6:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Just beneath her shoulder, doctors tell her she would be paralyzed, had she not leaned forward. 6:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The wound heals, but Celeste suffers chronic pain from scarring. 6:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And worse, she suffers sudden crying spells, and panic attacks. 6:45 [SPEAKER_00]: in a soon diagnosed with PTSD. 6:48 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time she finally returned to the tour, her hiatus from professional tennis had lasted two years. 6:55 [SPEAKER_00]: For his attempt to murder a teenage girl on international television, German court sentence, partial to two years probation. 7:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And to make matters worse, his plan works with St. Les Out. 7:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Graph wins the next four grand slam events on her way to becoming the greatest female athlete of the modern era. 7:13 [SPEAKER_00]: with a total of 22 grand slam championships. 7:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But the time Celeste's back on tour, she's anxiety-ridden, and out of shape. 7:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Her once legendary nerve in confidence is shaken. 7:25 [SPEAKER_00]: She wins just one more major tournament, topping out at a total of nine. 7:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Following another loss at the French Open in 1996, a Los Angeles Times article noted the following difference in her game. 7:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Quote, Celeste, normally fearless and a risk taker, was timid and circumspect. 7:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Though she has nothing in her history to suggest she would ever choke during a match. 7:50 [SPEAKER_00]: she visibly tightened, said last was not herself, under a blazing sun, her famous strength of mind, wilted. 7:58 [SPEAKER_00]: She was quoted as saying, there are not too many excuses, I just played very scared, that shouldn't have been the way I should have gone out today on the court. 8:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't take any chances, I played really defensive, which is not my style of game. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: If I'm on the tennis court, 8:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I should not play that way. 8:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Even her opponent was surprised by saying, I felt she was serving bad. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: A couple of games she served normally and had some easy games, but she was serving really really bad, even the first serve was weak. 8:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Because Celeste was the number one ranked player in the world when she was stabbed. 8:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The women's tennis association proposed holding her ranking until she was ready to play again. 8:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Tennis rankings are not like boxing titles. 8:43 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't hold them until someone beats you and takes them away. 8:46 [SPEAKER_00]: They're more like a merit system, where you have to keep playing and winning in order to hold your spot in the pecking order. 8:52 [SPEAKER_00]: But it seemed crazy for Celeste to lose her status simply because a fan tried to kill her on live TV. 8:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The WTA put their proposal to protect Celeste's ranking until she returned to a vote among all female players on tour. 9:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They rejected it unanimously. 9:10 [SPEAKER_00]: In Hamburg, Celus needed a security guard to have her back in the most literal way, and the aftermath of the near tragedy, she needed her peers to have her back in a different way. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: They failed her too. 9:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The media was even worse. 9:25 [SPEAKER_00]: At her first tournament in Madrid since the stabbing, the host of a Spanish tabloid show rushed forward, wielding a huge knife made of spongy material, shouting, take it Monica, it's for you. 9:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The once fierce competitor, you had so cheerfully dominated her sport, now struggled with depression and binge eating, becoming more of a sympathetic figure than a star. 9:51 [SPEAKER_00]: For my money, Monica Salais remains the greatest woman's tennis player of all time. 9:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Arguably, the greatest all together. 9:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And every time I think of her, I think of how arbitrary and cruel life can be. 10:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Had she not been stabbed, she might have won 30 majors. 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: or had she been stabbed years earlier, she might never have won it all. 10:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Success in this life is often arbitrary, which is to say that failure is too. 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Behind every loser is likely a good reason or a bunch of good reasons. 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: for why they always lose, and not every wound is so visible as a televised attempted murder. 10:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The case of Monica Salais reminds us that we can never have enough grace, we can never know what we'll never know about the people around us, and our impulse to judge should always be measured by this realization. 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The best players aren't always the ones holding the trophy, the best people often lose, 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: would probably have done the same to you.
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