The first Thursday of this year’s Championships will mark 10 years since Marion Bartoli’s finest day, when the French woman won the Wimbledon title, the culmination of an outstanding and colourful career. Bartoli was two-handed on both sides and was famous for her eccentric pre-point routines. She won eight titles and was ranked in the world’s top 20 every year from 2006 to 2013, peaking at No 7.
Wimbledon was also the venue for her worst day three years later when she was told she would not be allowed to play in the legends’ event for fears over her health, having lost weight to the point where the tournament felt it could not risk a serious incident. In the days afterwards, Bartoli said she was suffering from a mystery virus, but looking back, she says she pushed herself into bad health.
“It was definitely the most challenging moment of my life,” she says. “I [was] slowly and gradually getting to anorexia. First of all, it was a desire to just lose weight and then after that it became an obsession. What was my strength during my career, my mental strength – whatever was in front of me, to make it happen – that played against me because when you’re mentally so strong and you tell yourself to not eat, you can push that very far, which I did.
“I damaged my body and I damaged my health massively. My parents were there trying to help me out. But when you’re in that state of mind, you just don’t accept help.”
It took an intervention by Philip Brook, chairman of the All England Club at the time, to make her accept what was happening. “Philip just told me, ‘Marion, we just can’t let you play because we can’t take the risk that you have a heart attack on the court’.
“That was a shock for me because I felt at that moment tennis was being taken away from me. And you could take anything away from me but not tennis. That was my thing. I had to be on a tennis court. Tennis was my life and for ever will be. I remember telling myself, you have to crawl back up again. You can’t go to that slope, further and further away. You have to do something.
“Wimbledon in a way, saved me. That’s why it was so special, because Wimbledon made me and Wimbledon saved me three years later. If I didn’t have that wake-up call, I would probably keep on going down and down further.”
Bartoli spent six months in hospital in Italy “on a stomach feeding tube”. In the early stages, she was not allowed any visitors, had no mobile phone, no contact with the outside world. As she slowly improved, she focused on what she knew, sport.
“Three years ago, you were lifting a trophy and then you’re meeting Usain Bolt and you’re playing tennis with Elton John and all of a sudden, you’re by yourself in a hospital room. It’s a bit of a shocker,” she says.
Spurred on by the memory of another former Wimbledon champion, Amelie Mauresmo, running the New York marathon in 2010 (Mauresmo was her coach when Bartoli won in 2013), Bartoli entered the New York marathon. Remarkably, she completed it in just over 5hr 40min. “
“I went out of the hospital, took a plane to New York without any training whatsoever, seriously nothing,” she says. “I finished in front of my parents, my nephews, with my brother, it was such an emotional moment. That was my renaissance.”
Bartoli sealed her 2013 victory with an ace against Sabine Lisicki. The runner-up to Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2007, the experience of being there six years before paid dividends, while Lisicki, a first-time finalist, battled her nerves. At 28, Bartoli was a relatively late bloomer, at least compared to Iga Swiatek, who was 19 when she won at Roland Garros in 2020 and Emma Raducanu, who was 18 when she stormed to US Open glory the following year.
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Raducanu is recovering from operations to both wrists and one of her ankles and her habit of changing coaches every few months has been widely questioned. Bartoli does not doubt Raducanu’s tennis but would like to see her add someone to her team who has been there and done it before.
“She needs to use the time now, when the pressure is not there and she’s not in the spotlight, to really think deeply of what she wants next to her for the next five years at least,” Bartoli says. “She needs to have that if she wants to be able to build enough trust. You can’t change coach every six months, it’s impossible to have an impact on someone. It’s just not possible.”
After flirting with the idea of a comeback in 2018 – she retired in 2013 due to persistent injuries – Bartoli has been busy. The part-time coach and mentor of Jelena Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open champion, she is working with a couple of talented youngsters and has forged a burgeoning broadcast career and will be covering the tournament for the BBC on TV and radio. She is also a mother, her daughter, Kamilya, was born in December 2020.
Would she like her daughter to follow in her footsteps? “I want her to find a passion,” she says. “I want her to feel like she’s passionate about something, whatever that might be, and then go at it at 100%. Whatever you decide, you choose. Don’t quit when [things] start to get difficult … whether it’s sports, whether it’s art, whether it’s music, whatever you want. But I don’t like quitters. It’s just not my mindset.”
