How Το Make A Champion

My New Wimbledon Is To Have A Much Healthier Indian Race

- RIYAD MATHEW & AYAZ MEMON

One hundred years of insight into sports. Insights of an Olympian father and an Olympian son born to an Olympian mother. Tennis legend Leander Paes won 18 Grand Slams and an Olympic bronze. And now, he says, it is time to give back to the country. He yearns to create champions. “My new Wimbledon,” he says, “is to have a much healthier (Indian) race. Mental fitness, emotional fitness, physical fitness.” He has been codifying his father’s and his own notes on training children and empowering the youth through sports. In this inspirational interview, Leander narrates untold stories and lessons of life he gleaned from his encounters with greats such as Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Martina Navratilova, Martina Hingis, Serena Williams, Boris Becker and Andre Agassi. Edited excerpts from the interview recorded on July 14.

Q/Do you miss being on tour?

A/Not really. I guess when you have a career of five [or] fifteen years, you probably feel like [you have not done enough]. But having had a 31-year career, I feel really blessed to have squeezed out every single bit of passion—emotional, physical and mental—to give to this profession.

I think that playing an individual sport takes a mammoth amount of mental and emotional courage because you don’t have four other mates, or 10 other mates, travelling with you. Also, [in] India, you didn’t have many tennis players who travelled the world 48-49 weeks a year.